Out on the town...for Christmas shopping...

Spent today, a completely a-typical Saturday, running about town...just the two of us.

Kids hung out at the apartment with a kind colleague and her husband...and we took to the streets to start some Christmas shopping.

This time of year is usually terribly cold and uncomfortable.  But something wonderful has happened with our weather pattern these past few days.  It has been sunny and unseasonably warm.  The last two years we've holed up for the most of the month, waiting impatiently for the days to come when we could enjoy our pedestrian/public transit lifestyle again.  Numerous times today we remarked to each other "it is December 4th!"  The warmth and sunshine gave rise to great ambitions to press into the crowds and travel far and wide this little berg of 10 million.

Our first stop, after standing 30 minutes on a bus jostling against the several bodies therein, was the major shopping mall nearest our outpost.  Throngs of joyful city folk joined us in walking about window shopping and taking in the sights.  We watched as the massive Christmas tree was being erected outside the center.  A shiny gold, purple, blue, and red attempt at a seasonal decoration...still surrounded by layer upon layer of spindly bamboo scaffolding. 

Stepping inside the enormous complex we became aware of "Jingle Bells" being sung from some sound system unseen.  I chuckled as I realized that it is the same version of Jingle Bells we hear at every, I MEAN EVERY, store around the city that is attempting to recognize the season.  The version has a trio of ladies singing sprightly...I always envision them dancing in elf costumes.  "Jingle Bells, Jingle bells, jingle all the way.  Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open SLEE."  Again and again...the song drones on from store after store (as though it is the ONLY Christmas song in existence) over and over again the pronunciation of sleigh butchered as "slee."  We're not in Kansas anymore.

Another bus ride further into the metropolis brought us to yet again a Christmas tree in the final stages of construction.  This one, a mammoth, decorated in sparkling silver and white bands circumnavigating its girth...and horses...silhouettes of charging horses...from base to apex...

Nothing says Christmas like charging horses on your Christmas tree!

Then, after running down a busy road, chasing a few taxis before catching one...we headed over the river and saw our prize Christmas tree of the day...

It was very big, in front of a shopping mall that advertised Armani and Gucci on the exterior...this one was made of glass...but inverted...upside down!

Daddy said..."what sort of statement are they trying to make with that?"

I was reminded of the time we visited a registered fellowship here in the city many years ago...it was June...and there was a faux brick mantle on the back wall, with painted on stockings hung with care...just behind the pulpit.  Next to the communion table?  Frosty the Snowman, of course!  Apparently a year-round cheery sight that was to represent the western-idea of Christmas.

Of course, two years in a row we participated (as a school) in a Christmas concert...where our little school sang "What Child is This" and portrayed the nativity...but nothing else resembled anything close to the holidays at home...nothing says Merry Christmas like hip-hop dance crews and belly dancers!

It's a challenge to bring our Christmas traditions Here...to preserve some of the sweet things that mean "Christmas" to us.  We have brought over Christmas ornaments from our family tree in the States...and we bought a "new and improved" tree this year that's quality is so poor you could drive a truck through all the open spaces (where boughs should be.)

The actual day of Christmas is the biggest sale day of the year Here.  Everyone goes out shopping on the western-holiday that most people know nothing about...it is simply the greatest shopping day annually.

We decorated the tree tonight. 

There are two Christmas trees in the whole of our apartment complex.  Ours and the Wu's on four.

In a few days we'll have the 3rd annual "Teach All the Chinese Friends You Have How to Make Christmas Cookies" baking event.  Maybe 30 or so will come to decorate Christmas cookies, shapes of which they will have absolutely no context for...a wreath?  a snowman? a stocking?

We may go Christmas caroling on Christmas Eve.  Though in truth, nearly everything we sing, no one Here will have ever heard before...and will have no idea why the crazy foreigners are going around disturbing the peace on the night before the biggest shopping day of the year.

On the 21st we're hosting a Christmas party at the school.  We're going to have a gift exchange.  It was decided however that we could not ask for the gifts to be wrapped...because no one knows how to wrap gifts...and there is no such thing as "Christmas wrapping paper" anywhere Here in our city.

And then...there was that sweater I saw today being sold on top of some cardboard boxes on the sidewalk out front of the spicy duck neck restaurant...it was purple, with white and red snowmen on it...and suns...yellow, happy sunshines...

good grief!

...everyone knows that even with the magic hat...Frosty starts to melt in the sun...