For many of you reading this blog, your holiday season in America starts the day after Thanksgiving when Christmas trees, lights, music, and seasonal sales go on in full force. Until I moved to China, I had no idea how much I relied on the day after Thanksgiving to jump-start my own holiday spirit!
To start at the beginning of the season, we were very fortunate to celebrate Thanksgiving here in China with our American friends. We went to Tom & Donna Rampone's house, and with 3 other couples and 5 kids, we feasted on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and apple pie. We all studiously ignored the fact that we were celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday, that the turkey had to be cooked at a local butcher shop because none of our ovens are big enough, and that the turkey cost $100 USD! As I have often said, you can find anything you want in Shanghai, it just depends on what you are willing to pay for it!
But as mentioned above, in America the day after Thanksgiving usually looks very different than the day before due to decorations. Here in China, of course, there is no Thanksgiving. And decorations don't go up, there are no lights in trees lining downtown shopping streets. There are no giant Christmas trees in Pioneer Square, there are no carols playing over the loudspeaker in the grocery store.
About three days after Thanksgiving, the absence of holiday decorations combined with the onset of homesickness made me truly sad. We've been told by friends, and read in books that the first wave of homesickness/depression hits at the 3 month mark. Joe's hit early at 2 months, mine kicked in full-force at the end of month 4, just after Thanksgiving. Suddenly I was pining for the things that drive me crazy at home - like K103 playing all Christmas music from Thanksgiving day until Christmas day, and cheesy TV ads showing unexpected people returning home for the holidays, and decorations in every single store and restaurant, and Christmas movies on TV - even the really bad ones on the Lifetime Channel! I missed how easily accessible Christmas is at home.
So I started thinking, if you don't have the retail industry driving Christmas, what is the actual "start" of the Christmas season? If you are Christian, it is the advent season. Our family goes to church in the States, but I have honestly never paid attention to the advent calendar because of everything else going on! But this is a good segue into church in Shanghai.
There are 2 churches in Pudong (the east side of Shanghai where we live). One is a Catholic church and the other a non-denominational protestant church. We had been to the protestant church only once before, and we returned at the beginning of December in order to celebrate the Christmas season. This church is clearly trying to be something to everyone, and the result is a very odd mix of traditional and contemporary songs, pieces and parts of Lutheran, Baptist, and Presbyterian services. The first time we went it annoyed me to no end because it felt so disjointed (oh, and because there was a guest minister preaching who mentioned, during the sermon, that his book was for sale in the lobby and that he would sign it for you personally when you purchased it!). But when we went during December, I loved this church because they replaced all those odd disjointed pieces with EVERY Christmas song known to man! It was my only source of Christmas music besides what we downloaded from iTunes.
There is something truly unique and special about singing Christmas songs with 300 other people in a church in China. Especially when you realize that outside the walls of the church where you are standing, Christianity, even a belief in God, is a rarity. As we stood in church singing carols, I felt incredibly blessed to be from a country where I can choose my religion, and where religion and a hope for better things, and a ridiculous craving for happy endings is all part of who we are. I didn't really know how much I loved that about my own country and culture until I moved to China.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment