Christmas in China

“China doesn't celebrate Christmas” is probably as misinforming as “Brooklynite doesn’t swear”. Of course, most mild-mannered folks from Brooklyn don’t swear (at least not in public), and most Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas the way most westerners do in the west. But by most conservative estimates, there are at least 50 million Christians in China, and, while they are merely a fraction of China’s massive population, they are not, in absolute terms, insubstantial.


Yet, their religiosity is mostly masked away, for personal piety or for whatever reason you may think to be related to the Chinese government’s alleged micromanagement of religion in China.

Thus, there are both a mist of romanticism and a tinge of mystique about attending a church service in China, not least on Christmas Eve: romantic, because it is as if one is seeking a forbidden fruit; mystical, because one hears so much about it yet experiences so little. My last church visit was three years ago, also on Christmas Eve, in a little Arizonan town called Flagstaff. I was there because a pastor's child with whom I was road-tripping in the area at that time compelled me to check out Jesus Christ. It wasn’t as if I’ve never checked out J.C. before –I grew up with some family members who are evangelical, born-again Christians, and spent a great deal of my childhood in a high school supervised by the Anglican Church. Yet, I went with my road-tripping buddy anyway because I didn't want to sit in the motel room alone, nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels while TV showed Jerry Springer repeats. But I digress. Three years later, I wasn’t trying to deal with solitude, but to find out more about religion in China: thus I found myself sitting inside a church in Beijing, singing Christmas carols in Chinese and observing each and every moving part during the church service. Midway into the church service, its surprising familiarity compelled me to wonder whether, language aside, the same moment could have replayed anywhere else, especially given that I expected a state-sanctioned church service to be drastically different from a non-supervised one, like the one in Arizona. My observation was this: if there were any difference, it was minute. I was told that state-sanctioned churches, where the pastors are pre-screened by the state, forbid pastors from aggressive evangelism and from mustering certain phrases, such as heavenly kingdom (天國) and road to heaven (去天國的路), lest they be contrary to the proletarian ideals. I didn’t believe I heard any of such phrases, or any phrases that I’d imagine could be “smoking guns”. On the other hand, that could also mean that I was simply not paying attention to what the pastor was saying (or that it was impossible, unless after some heavy post facto analysis, to find out what was censored and left unsaid). Anyway, I was honestly too preoccupied romanticizing that surreal moment – the moment where a nonbeliever like me was sitting in a Communist-sanctioned church in China, on Christmas Eve, listening to his brothers and sisters singing Lord-praising phrases in unified choruses – to give much thought about what was said or unsaid. Admittedly, a lot of folks were just like me –they were there to satisfy their curiosity, while others just seized any opportunity to snap digital pictures as if they were bedeviled by Annie Leibovitz’s spirit. But, like that 50 million+ folks in China, the rest was enlivened by the joyous moment, praising the glory of the Lord in a genuine act of faith and dedication to J.C. and his heavenly father.

I am not ready to say that I was moved by any of the romanticization. My agnosticism aside, however, I am somewhat relieved to see how at least some folks in China genuinely believe in something other than Louis Vuittons and the kind of material comfort that is devoid of non-utilitarian substance.