by Grace Paullin
There is a great shame that weighs on my shoulders, a shame that I fear to admit. Yet, it feels necessary to admit for this article. My shame? I dislike the Fall season. I bemoan the inconsistent weather, detest the pumpkin spice frenzy, and genuinely do not understand the hype around Halloween—although this year’s festivities were a welcome reprieve from my new post-grad routine.
Admitting my feelings about Halloween alone puts me at odds with my queer community, but I can lie no more. It is that chilly period after the spooky decorations are retired and Thanksgiving is past that I look forward to every year. Winter, the holiday season, that period of just three months I hold so dear—every snowfall, cherished, and tiny momentswith loved ones, held in my heart. How could anyone not love each second of it?
The world slows down for just a glimmering moment. Wars halt, traffic slows, the day shortens, and even nature itself retreats, awaiting the oncoming Spring. What’s left? Peace. A resplendent silence that asks you to take it in, to feel the peace mandated by the planet’s tilt. When the Sun has retired by five in the afternoon and snow blankets the soil, as I hear the crunch of that snow emanating from my passing steps, I feel as if nature and I are one. You’re invited to breathe for a moment and observe the peace.
Invitations do not only come from the tiring nature either; across the world, you are invited to cultural events reserved for this place in time. Every culture has a quintessential Winter Holiday. Generally, these holidays were created to celebrate the last bit of surplus before the Winter’s rationing kicked in. In my primary field of study, the Romans had Saturnalia, characterized by grand feasts and social-role reversals. In China, Dong Zhi is celebrated to commemorate the last harvest before Winter sets in and is again celebrated with a feast with family.
A theme is developing. Knowing that times are about to get difficult, people get together and share their resources in a celebration of humanity, contrasting the brutal, uncaring cold outside their walls.
Winter is a beauty that I simply do not have enough words in my lexicon to give justice to. Yet, we are not here today to discuss my embrace of the season; instead, I have been tasked with bringing you the many ways Asia celebrates one of the most popular varieties of Winter celebrations—Christmas.
This usually is where I would describe the mythology of Christmas in its capacity as a religious holiday for Christianity. However, when it comes to Christmas in Asia, it is unnecessary. In the United States, the “taking the Christout of Christmas” mantra has been a—somewhat comical—slogan from the political Right since the “War on Christmas” narrative picked up steam during the Obama administration. That is just in the States, though; in Asia, it is more or less accurate for the majority of countries in the region. Christianity just doesn’t hold sway like that in the region, but Europe imposed it during the colonial era.
One of colonialism's many lasting impacts is the peculiar infusion of certain Christian rituals into former colonial subjects. Because of this, most Asian nations have some spin on the holiday but without the religious substance. Most countries consider Christmas an opportunity to give gifts or appreciate a certain commodification of the Holiday’s essence.
If you’ve been on the internet around this time in the past decade, you are probably aware of Japan’s fixation on KFC around Christmas time. Since the ’80s, KFC has been a ubiquitous part of the Japanese Holiday landscape. Statues of Colonel Sanders all around the country are shown adorned in Santa costumes, with matching winter-themed containers at checkout. More interesting to me, however, is the subtle ways that the social norms around gift-giving are interpreted. For instance, gifts are generally exchanged only between loved ones, unlike the universal affair in the West. One article states that many young couples even treat the holiday as a second Valentine’s Day, evidenced by the over-booked “love hotels” in the cities.
Other nations take on this entirely areligious conception of Christmas as well. China, as it has joined the ranks of the world’s best-performing economies, has generated a generational split between those born before and after the reforms of Deng Xiao Ping. Although the similarly timed Spring Festival carries a higher weight in the collective consciousness of all people in the Han areas of China, Christmas has caught on among the young. Unlike their parents and grandparents, the economic prosperity of those we’d consider millennials and subsequent generations has adopted their own form of Christmas consumerism. Christianity may officially be banned in the country. Yet, due to the “Christ out of Christmas” nature of the holiday in the East Asian Theatre, Christmas has ballooned in metropolitan centers like Beijing and Shanghai. Some cities have even been known to partake in the spectacle of seasonal decorations on their business fronts.
This has caused quite an upset in older generations and conservative-minded intellectuals, who see it as an obscene step away from Chinese culture. The indignation peaked in 2006 when some of the top intellectuals from Chinese Universities signed an open letter stating that the mass adoption of Christmas represented a threat to Chinese society. Although nothing notable to substantiate this fear has occurred in the years since publishing, more than anything, the Holiday has only become more popular with those who have spare income to spend on gifts.
Stepping out of the coastal regions in East Asia toward the areas that Christians colonized, a different story emerges from the cultural milieu. Many countries in the Southeast region have a complex history with Christianity as an actual faith, not the boiled-down consumerist relationship that most on the continent have. These countries also have sizable Christian minorities to match. A great example of this comes from Thailand, where between 300,000 and 400,000 Catholics call home.
As far as my research has taken me, Thai Christians have a limited array of unique activities. However, there is a Christmas Eve lantern release, which comes from a long-held national tradition around the activity that existed before Christianity hit Thai shores. However, it isn’t the secular celebrations that enchant me. Instead, it is the rather uniform nature of Catholics in a region so far from Rome. One article, titled “A Christmas Mourning: Catholicism in Post-Bhumibol Thailand,” describes both the stringent orthodoxy of Catholic Christmas being celebrated in the country and the curious way the politics of Thailand has impacted practice.
When the almost unanimously adored King Bhumibol died in 2016, the country was still in mourning over the Winter, leading to a modified Christmas Mass. Why? The passed monarch was a non-official figure of spirituality for Thai Catholics, sometimes even venerated alongside Buddhist deities and Saints, a unique feature of Christianity in the nation. At Mass, the Catholic Priests even threw in prayers to the dead King, and celebrations were described as a “…coherent synthesis between the birth of Jesus and the death of King Bhumibol.” See the localized alteration at play; this synthesis could only occur in Thailand. Patriotic Christians changing the celebration of their Messiah’s birth to the mourning of their recently passed defender, almost synchronizing the two figures. In nearby Indonesia, there are unique factors at play, too.
Indonesia must share space with two Abrahamic religions: Islam and Christianity. Since people are social creatures at heart, the two faiths have started to share practices. The most interesting example of which is the adaptation of the Islamic practice of “Qurbani.” Qurbani describes the sacrificing of an animal during Eid al-Adha celebrations, meant to emulate the actions of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham to Christians). After the deed is done, one-third of the meat is handed out to those in need. However, in Marbinda and Marhobas, Christians started to borrow the practice as a celebration for Christmas. Although we may have mixed feelings about the sacrifice in principle, it still follows the idea at the heart of Christmas as a celebration: caring for the community around you. Another practice that is adapted from the core of Javan culture is Wahyu. In Java, Wayang Wahyu is the Christian variation of the famous Shadow Puppetry from the Indigenous Javan population. Instead of folklore, Biblical Stories are portrayed against the well-lit linen, fulfilling the same cultural purpose as a medium to share stories—secular or ecclesiastical.
Another wonderful example of cultural exchange presents itself in Tibet, where a small community of Catholics call home. The region began to encounter Catholic missions during the 19th century, and the faith stuck in the village of Cizhong. The town is even home to its own church, made unique by its eloquent Tibetan design, symbolic of the cultural mixing at hand. The community has had its ups and downs, an experience shared with other religious minorities in China; they have persisted and even started to thrive in recent years. Cizhong has become an intellectual curiosity that students of various disciplines come to study, adding to the community’s success and notoriety. The residents are unmistakably Catholic in theology, reveling in all the holidays, including a locally inspired Christmas celebration.
Christmas Eve marks the decoration of their church, with Western-inspired altars, and even small Christmas trees dot the town. On Christmas day, the people gather in traditional clothing to attend Mass, which leads to non-sectarian afternoon celebrations. Local Buddhists and other endemic polytheistic faiths are invited to the feasts and festivities to partake in the joy. Crucially, celebrations in Cizhong appear to lack any commercial element, reflecting the region's local culture and economic stature. Nonetheless, these people invoke the giving spirit by involving everyone who wishes to join in on their feasts and revelry.
Returning to the southeast, though, we again see a secular Christmas tradition in Malaysia. The multi-island nation has a similar religious makeup to Indonesia, both sharing a super-majority of Muslims with sizable Christian minorities. This, however, has not stopped Christmas from being celebrated in an albeit more materialistic sense. Malls boom with sales; lights string the major cities, and trees with ornaments rise high in the largest shopping centers. Oddly enough, Malaysia can only be paralleled with Japan in how voracious the appetite is for celebrating the season. Like Japan, Malaysians take Christmas as a market holiday, whose relevance is in the exchange of goods rather than the Biblical origins underneath. I suppose that takes us back to our preamble in pages past.
The discourse around the taking of “Christ” out of “Christmas” has always been puzzling to me. Not that there are no genuine theological reasons for Christians to detest the transformation of the holiday to a paycheck for corporations. That I get. It is the annual grift that I take issue with, as it comes from a cynical place. Everything that I love about the season, everything I hold so dear in the procession of snow, gift giving and receiving, the physical warmth of the stoked fireplace, and the emotional warmth of loved ones during the seasonal festivities, are those not present across the globe on the 25th?
Does it matter if the celebration is happening in a Church or KFC? Does it matter if Mass is held in reverence for Jesus alone, or is it somehow diminished when accommodating a loved national figure, or does Mass even have to occur at all for the spirit of the season to permeate? I know a couple billion people in Asia, Christian or otherwise, who may have a thing or two to say about this. As for me, I am happy to share in the festivities. Witness how the many beautiful cultures on our planet take this holiday and make it theirs while somehow holding onto the festival’s purpose of inter-personal celebration.
In closing this article, I want to share a piece that embodies my thesis. Cynthia Edwards’ "Intercultural Connections and Volunteer Experience Through Christmas Cards" is an academic paper written to analyze a case study in cross-cultural communication using English. Although the title gives away the surprise a bit, this otherwise benign literature about English as a lingua franca exemplifies the true meaning of Christmas and winter holidays at large.
First-Year English Students in Japan were given the opportunity to write Christmas Cards for children in the Philippines who were victims of a recently passed typhoon. As stated earlier, Japan has virtually no religious context for the holiday; meanwhile, the Philippines is a majority Catholic nation. Given this, the Japanese students were in for a learning experience. Many had not even known that the origins of Christmas were religious and became enamored with the celebration's origins as they learned more.
These students started to learn phrases meant to convey their sympathy and best wishes to the intended recipients. Messages of “May your wishes come true” or “Do not give up hope” were etched onto the cards alongside drawings of cross-culturally recognizable symbols like Pikachu and Snoopy. The messages made their way to the intended audience in the end, and unfortunately, the article does not say where the cards were sent or the response from the children, but we can be sure they were not ill-received. These kids, who may have lost everything, were reassured that people in nations they likely could only dream of were thinking of them, their struggle, and hoping for the best. The article also notes that many who partook in the card creation were inspired to do more volunteer work and philanthropy at home.
That is Christmas. Not just Mary and the Manger, but human love itself. Kind gestures to strangers, communal feasts, shared laughs with friends, and gifts for partners. Cynthia’s report shows, more than anything I could say, that Christmas’s spirit can exist outside the Bible and between any intersectional identity. Readers, before what is shaping up to be a bleak 2025 for many, spend December being kind. Call that friend you haven’t heard from in a while. Make sure your elderly neighbor has everything they need, so they don’t have to go out in the cold and ice. Contact your local foodbank to see if they need an extra hand or could take in some goods. Then, when Christmas is past and Winter ends, do it again.
Almost no one can afford to buy gifts every day of the year, but that doesn’t mean that Christmas must end. Exude the season's spirit every day and become involved in your community. A PlayStation 5 is not everyone’s conception of a present; for some, it is ensuring they get their medications on time because of their advanced age disables their independence. For others, it is ensuring that your area is ADA-compliant so they can experience the mobility independence they cannot have without their duly owed accommodation. For even more, a gift is a stocked community cupboard so they can eat that night. These things, and more, you can—and should—do every day.
Happy Holidays,
Grace Paullin
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