Posted on 12/24/2014 8:40:54 PM PST by SeekAndFind
BEIJING—There’s a joke going around: “Santa Claus was descending into China from the sky. Due to the heavy smog, he fell to the ground, but no one dared help him up. While he was still lying in the snow, his bag was ransacked for presents, and his reindeer and sleigh taken away by the chengguan. Therefore, no Christmas this year.”
While some of the humor needs context—there are digs at China’s notorious bystander effect and much-despised urban-management officials, chengguan—the larger meaning is clear. Ironic jokes about Santa’s routine being disrupted with uniquely Chinese characteristics are a sure sign that, yes, they do know it’s Christmas time in communist China.
Retailers lead the way here: An annual spending season that once focused on Chinese New Year in the winter is now bloated and elongated, stretching from the invented Singles' Day on November 11 through February, with Christmas as a kind of hump day. Even before December, shops, streets, and hotels begin filling with slightly off-kilter Yuletide scenes: performers in elf suits play traditional cymbals while a grinning plastic Santa Claus toots a saxophone outside his gingerbread cabin. Why the sax? Theorists point to everything from romantic associations with the avuncular Bill Clinton jamming on the instrument in the 1990s, to the smooth alto-sax muzak that is the preferred soundtrack of Santa’s typical dwelling, the shopping mall.
There’s no sign of Jesus, but in many big cities, you’re still more likely to see Father Christmas’s face than that of “Uncle” Xi Jinping, as state media has characterized the country’s president, presenting a homely, familial image that’s quite at odds with the repressive manner in which he’s coldly eliminated opponents. But Xi is not above the fray himself, visiting Santa’s official cabin in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
That’s definitely Colonel Samurai Sanders!
Try the veal.
Merry Christmas!
.... I forgot to say,
"I'll be here all week. Take good care of your server."
But Merry Christmas anyway.
The reason that Xmas is big in a country full of non-Christians? The same reason that even those who are hostile to Christ celebrate it here: it is a faux holiday originated by the spiritual god of this world. It is tangible proof that Satan exists.
Worse, in the post-Christian west, people who have outright hostility to the things that Jesus said and the conditions that Jesus stated in order to qualify for His free gift of eternal life, observe Xmas. We see this in the hostility these people have to how Jesus defines marriage as only being between one man and one woman.
It is time for people who obey what Jesus said to demand that people who repudiate what Jesus teaches with respect to same sex “marriage” also repudiate Xmas.
I just watched a Christmas story on t.v. again tonight and assumed it was the Chinese who couldn’t pronounce their Ls. Because of the scene of the family going to a Chinese restaurant for thanksgiving dinner and the waiters singing deck the how’s with boughs of howwy...Fa ra ra ra ra...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.