by Emily Branwell

Created on: December 10, 2008   Last Updated: December 20, 2008

Like every family that celebrates Christmas around the globe I am sure that those in China who celebrate Christmas each have their own special way of doing so. I spent a year living and teaching at a public elementary school in China. Christmas fell during the winter break and my students got to go home, which was a rare treat for them. We spent the week leading up to the winter break trying to do all the things "normal westerners" do for Christmas. My kitchen became a Gingerbread Man mass production unit, my microwave a state of the art hot coco heater and my tv and vcr played Frosty the Snowman and A Christmas Carol so many times the tapes nearly busted. These were all things they had seen done on reruns of dubbed 1980's American television shows like Growing Pains and also of course on Mr. Bean The Christmas episode. These were not activities they had ever done before.

In fact, being one of of twelve Westerners living long term in my city of nearly two million people, I ushered in a lot of strange holiday firsts for that community. Artificial Christmas trees, though common in public places like cafes and shopping centers in big cities like Beijing were oddities for the everyday apartment in my city. My American co-teachers and I went to the local plant nursery and bought the closest thing we could find to a pine tree. It was about four and half feet tall with wispy leaves that slightly resembled needles. Planted in heavy clay in a stucco pot it weighed a considerable amount so we had it delivered to the house by bicycle cart. When we very clearly gave instructions in Chinese to have the tree carried into the house the delivery man would simply not believe we knew what we wanted. This was clearly an outside tree. It took a lot of pleading to have the tree brought into the living room. I am sure he still speaks of the foreigners and their crazy ways.

It snowed in our city all that winter and so we had snowball fights and built snowmen outside the kids dorms after hours so they would have a nice surprise in the morning. We went shopping at large mall-like shopping centers and spent way too much money on material goods. On Christmas day we met up with our friends and had a large meal and opened gifts from each other and packages sent from home.

Every family on a single, typical street in the middle of America has their own traditions. For me, my Christmas experience in China was like most others; full of all the ways we as humanity enjoy a winter holiday. The essentials were all there; rest, beauty, loved ones and good food.

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