Christmassy Things: Christmas!

It's December, and things are starting to feel festive! Even in the hot, sunny tropics. Christmas is a huge deal across most of Europe (and the Americas, and some other places). Of course it is a Christian festival to celebrate the birth of Jesus - though nobody knows Christ's real birth-date, and December 25th was actually re-appropriated from the pagan Mid-Winter festival in a political / diplomatic move of 'change management' in Europe, many centuries ago! Today in the UK, many families (even my rather lapsed Christian one!) celebrate the religious aspects of December 24th/25th. So we might attend a Christmas Mass at the church, for example - even if we rarely attend church at other times of year. And while religious aspects might have become diluted, the season's Christian traditions of generosity, compassion and goodwill hopefully do still hold!

More recently, however (and I think sadly) Christmas has become dominated by retail pressure, for shops make cash. This is the world over - Christmas buying frenzy and sparkly decorations are all over Singapore annually, and I've just been to Malaysia (an officially Muslim country) and it's the same there. Money and retail are universal. Though for me, Christmas retail pressure in Asia is pleasantly mild compared to what we get in the UK!

In Japan the festival is celebrated (not as a religious festival by most) with a loose tradition of eating KFC on Christmas Day. This is a genius move by KFC, incidentally. To get your product nationally associated with somebody else's annual festival is surely a marketing Holy Grail (excuse pun)! I guess an equivalent would be if Koka managed to get Europe or North America to eat their packet noodles every Chinese New Year :) [Koka marketing team, if you are reading this.... ]

I guess the one upside, perhaps, of the loss of the festival's true, Christian roots, and the generalisation of Christmas as simply a kind of party with gifts and shiny things, is that it is more universally accessible. This means that people the world over, regardless of culture or religion, can enjoy some amiable aspects of the festival too. (And I don't mean retail or KFC!)

So over the next couple of weeks, I am going to post about a few Christmassy Things, which hopefully anyone can investigate and enjoy. Tarrah for now! 

More Christmas reading from this blog: 

London at Christmas: festive arcades

London at Christmas: The Advent Calendar

London at Christmas: Kissing under the mistletoe

British Christmas Nosh

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

Photo: tree next to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, credit to Conde Nast Traveller.