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Chritmas Bedeviled by Counter Attractions

Chinese are not the only people puzzled by Christmas and the celebrations that take place on and around December 25. Many westerners too have lost sight of the event's true meaning.

The only certainty of Christmas in modern China is the confusion that surrounds it, especially when it is celebrated largely as a commercial jamboree in a secular state. But while secularism remains an individual philosophical choice for citizens and foreigners, others are free to pursue the doctrine of Christianity if they so wish, and take part in its major celebrations such as Christmas and Easter.
This apart, a Beijing Christmas is pretty much along the lines of a London, New York or Sydney Christmas at base what people see as a chance to over-indulge in seasonal food and drink in the company of family and friends, and to exchange presents. More often than not, it seems, little thought is given to the religious meaning of Christmas which, simply, is to celebrate the birth of Jesus just over 2,000 years ago.
While Christmas is not a public holiday in China, the behavior of those who celebrate it seems prima facie little different from that of Chinese during their beloved Spring Festival Ñ essentially a family occasion with traditional foods and gifts, and the appearance of a rash of celebratory paper-cuts, couplets, red hongbao gift packets containing money, and other traditional artifacts.
Christmas has become far more a blatantly commercial occasion-this a global phenomenon-with malls, shops and markets overflowing with Christmas gifts, seasonal greetings cards, crackers to be pulled during the traditional turkey Christmas dinner, and home decorations. It's also when leading Beijing hotels pull out all the stops in offering lavish seasonal foods and special events (the latter mainly charitable for underprivileged children especially).
There's the ubiquitous Santa Claus too, of course, jolly, tubby volunteers all over the place, happily dressed in red and with glued-on white whiskers mouthing "o Ho Ho!"Ó and doing their bit to perpetuate the spirit of Christmas for the benefit of wide-eyed youngsters. Santa Claus is said to come from the North Pole, borne across the skies in a sleigh hauled by eight reindeer.
It happens there's only one real (i.e. copyrighted) Santa Claus in Beijing each Yuletide, and you will find him at the Holiday Inn Lido Hotel if you want to ask him for a new Maserati or diamond necklace in the traditional Christmas stocking you will hang from your bed on Christmas Eve ...
Which, along with roasted chestnuts and Christmas pudding, is all part of the fun surrounding December 25, not totally a bad thing in an increasingly threatening, cruel and hungry world. If nothing else, Christmas and all it stands for in religious terms can be said to embrace hope for the future of mankind or so countless theologians would have us believe.

Although the exact date of Jesus birth is not known, the ancient calendar divided all time into BC (Before Christ) and AD (anno Domini, a Latin phrase meaning "in the year of our Lord" but more commonly translated as After Death). For some 300 years after Jesus'death, His birthday was celebrated on different dates around the world. It was not until AD354 that church leaders are said to have officially chosen December 25 as His birthday.

Hame Game
Santa Claus has been called by several different names over the years, including Father Christmas. The original tale of the jolly, generous figure may have been based on the Dutch legend of Sinter Klaas, which emerged in the 1600s.

He started to become famous when in the 1800s American author Washington Irving published stories about a character he named Saint Nicholas, who arrived at people's houses on Christmas Eve and left presents for the children if they had behaved properly during the year.
Saint Nicholas became more famous when writer Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem in 1823 called The Night Before Christmas which gave children a consistent description of Santa Claus and his eight flying reindeer. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history ...

Sun-tanned Santa?
Professional researchers are adamant that the original Santa Claus lived nowhere near the North Pole. They say that if he existed at all, it was in the Mediterranean. While agreeing that Santa Claus is a corruption of Sinter Klaas, it was in the guise of Saint Nicholas that he visited children on Christmas Eve.
Saint Nicholas was, in fact, a 4th-century bishop of Myra, Turkey, and was the patron saint of children and unmarried girls. Tradition says he gave bags of gold to three daughters from a noble but poor family as their dowries, thus saving them from a life on the streets.
As the legend developed in the Netherlands, the bags of gold were replaced by huge sacks of gifts which Santa Claus distributed to children on December 6, Saint Nicholas'feast day. Dutch settlers took this custom to North America, where it fused with European legends about a winter spirit who gave gifts to good children and punished the bad.