Asia adopts Christmas

Somewhere on the journey to becoming the world's biggest exporter of Christmas toys, China started importing yule for itself.

Christmas wreaths and lighted trees, white-foam snowmen and special dinners, as well as an ethos of "jingle-bell cool" are wafting in on the wings of global culture, bringing a holiday atmosphere to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

At a Beijing noodle shop bedecked with silver and gold plastic bells, cook Yin Li pauses over a beef stew when asked if all the decorations seem like a foreign cultural invasion. "Honestly, no," she says. "I like it. It makes everything feel more like a holiday."

Throughout Asia, in fact, Western holidays have become chic, both for their commercial potential and because new generations think the act of decorating and celebrating is fun and different. Not only Christmas, but Valentine's Day, Father's Day and Mother's Day, Thanksgiving and Halloween, are finding a Pacific niche - where five years ago there was none.

"There's an appropriation and modification of Western holidays, with a commercial twist, in Asia," says Mark Mullins, a professor of religion and Japanese society at Sophia University in Tokyo. "Each year it increases ... whether or not people are interested in faith."

Five Santas from Sweden arrived in Beijing earlier this month. Bakeries sell "Christmas cakes," a Japanese innovation on the holiday. It is now fashionable for couples to visit the government-sanctioned cathedral in Beijing on Christmas Eve. On Dec. 1, a performance of Handel's "Messiah" was permitted for the first time in the Forbidden City Music Hall; the conductor was an expatriate, but the alto and tenor roles were sung by mainland Chinese.

"Only a few years ago, you'd never have seen this, but I think people like [the new Christmas look], and now it won't stop," says a Chinese scholar.

Christmas candlelight services and music are also gaining momentum in Tokyo. At Meiji Gakuin University last week, a candlelight chorale at the chapel "was packed out," says Dr. Mullins. "In Japan, 300 people is a crowd, especially for a Christian event attended by mostly non-Christians. You see this more and more."

The hugely popular Japanese Christmas cake is a new holiday dessert. But the small white cake tied with a red ribbon, and sold in December, is not a Western borrowing. If anything, the cake borrows from the August Chinese moon cake tradition.

An even greater surprise may be the success of Santa Claus in Vietnam. Last year in this Buddhist country, stores recorded a huge spike upward in the sales of artificial Christmas trees, and other holiday paraphernalia, according to the official Vietnam news service.

Among the educated in majority Hindu India, the outward trappings of Dec. 25 have been discovered, with prominent buildings in Delhi sporting lighted trees - as well as businesses and homes.

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