Christmas Prep

It's Christmas time, but if you are here in China you wouldn't know it. The Chinese celebrate Christmas like Americans celebrate the day after thanksgiving. So just like Americans on black Friday, the Chinese either stay up really late or get up really early to go shopping and get some good deals. The only places that you will see any Christmas decor is at the big shopping malls where they are trying to cash in on the commercial side of Christmas. They also don't really get snow here in Wuhan, so a lack of snowy weather and a dingy gray sky make it seem even less like Christmas. I have to admit that I really wish we could see some Christmas lights right about now.

Our apartment wasn't feeling very festive either, so I decided to do what I could to change that. Since we are not allowed to publicly celebrate the religious aspect of Christmas in China we had to be a little bit careful. We have students and Chinese people over to our apartment more often than I thought we would, and it is really hard to avoid the religion issue with them. We figured having a picture of Christ and a nativity seen on the wall might raise questions, and we could get into some major trouble if we talked about it. I am really irritated with the whole religion issue here in China. I will be grateful to get back to America and talk about and live my religion whenever and wherever I want. So anyway, We have decorated with religion free decorations this year, more specifically, SNOWFLAKES! I originally only planned on putting them on our front door, but they were a great way to kill time in between classes. So I ended up cutting out about 100 snowflakes and have put them on all the doors in our house. I would like to keep going but I got a blister on my finger from the scissors.The snowflakes definitely made things feel more festive, but then last night while walking home from the grocery store we found a man on the side of the road who was selling stockings and Santa hats. We each bought a stocking and we hung them on our wall with those sticky wall hook things. They made it feel even more like Christmas. We aren't planning on buying each other Christmas presents like we normally would, but I will definitely be getting some stocking stuffers now that we have stockings to put them in!

The Icing on the cake for us took place just a few hours ago. We were at the grocery store again to buy some cheap crappy toilet paper when we saw that they finally had some Christmas items for sale in the store, some of which were fake Christmas trees! They didn't have very many trees and none of them were very tall, and half of them were silver, but we decided to get one anyway. It is so cute. It is only about a foot and a half tall. While walking home I was hoping we would see people with chritmas ornaments, and we did, but they were ugly and poor quality and they were asking more than I wanted to pay. So once we got home we decided to decorate the tree with my jewelry! So we used my necklaces as garlands and my earrings as ornaments. I have to say I think it turned out pretty cool. I wouldn't want to do things this way every year, but for our situation here in China things have worked out pretty good. We are able to catch a little bit of that Christmas spirit that is so prevalent back home. Enjoy your full size and maybe even real Christmas tree's and know that we are happy for you and also a little jealous!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!