Last Christmas

Christmas in China is not like any Norwegian Christmas I’ve ever celebrated, but still it wasn’t a bad Christmas! Most people I talked with had no idea why Christmas is celebrated, but they still bought paper cuts of Santa to hang in their windows, and wanted to give their families small presents. They refer to it as a “Western festival”, and I suppose that’s what it has become several places. As neither Tilla or I were greatly influenced by the spirit of this jolly event, we waited until last minute before we cleaned, and did other preparations. While at the supermarket I got a predecorated plastic tree, and when Tilla’s mom came with a bunch of presents, it looked pretty nice standing there on a table in the corner of our gigantic livingroom. After eating imported rice porridge from Norway the morning of Christmas Eve, we decorated gingerbread, made a Norwegian holiday drink called gløgg, and went to give our colleagues this small holiday treat. I would say one of the teachers got the point when she said that we were spreading the love of Christmas. My Christmas dinner this year was a little out of the ordinary; chicken wings and rice. It didn’t feel like Christmas until we sat down, lit some candles, and opened the presents. It was not so much because of the presents, but more because of the fact that we where sitting down together in the livingroom (which we never use), talking, laughing, and reflecting upon why Christmas is celebrated. Either way, in the end it actually felt like Christmas! When I woke up the following morning it felt like any other day in China. We left to spend the weekend in Nanjing, and that night I was filled with the spirit of Christmas again. Christmas decorations outside Deji Plaza in Nanjing.

We went to our church’s Christmas dinner. There were a lot of people there! I’d say between 200 and 300 maybe.

We sang carols and worshiped, and it was a great night! It was topped of when everyone was given a candle each, and they switched of the lights. I don’t have words to explan the feeling of standing in the midst of people from all over the world, celebrating that our Savior was born over 2000 years ago. It was plainly AMAZING!!

[Via http://tashavic.wordpress.com]