Well, needless to say, this has probably been our most "different" Christmas yet! While we've both been away from our families several times over Christmas in past years, living in China definitely tops them all for being completely different to a Western Christmas.Most Chinese don't celebrate Christmas; instead they're super big on Chinese New Years which will be starting in about 4 weeks from now. However, they still decorate the malls with lights and pictures of Santa and play Christmas music, although I don't think they understand the background as to why Christmas is celebrated in the first place. In any case, it's nice to be around a bit of "Christmasy stuff".
At our school, our program being Canadian, us 4 teachers decided we'd totally celebrate Christmas, just like we went big with Halloween a couple months ago. We encouraged our kids to decorate their classrooms, which they did with huge initiative... the classes looked GREAT! Some of our kids even managed to get fake Christmas trees from somewhere... one for each classroom. There were sparkly garlands, snowflakes, ornaments, lights, and artwork hanging from every wall, bulletin board, ceiling, and fan... so nice!
On Dec 23rd we had a big C-mas party at school. There were games like "Pin the nose on Rudolph" and the "Rudolph Dash", a big gift exchange, a visit from Santa Clause (our principal, Ron), skits and presentations, and lots of caroling that Andrew led on his guitar. The kids were so enthusiastic... they're just fantastic to plan stuff for b/c they love whatever we do. There are no bad-attitude-kids sulking in the back saying "this sucks"... which is so refreshing for us!
In the week leading up to the Christmas party, I took some time during my classes to teach the kids some C-mas carols so they'd be primed for the carols during the party. I did this by looking up the carols online in the classroom, putting the lyrics on the overhead, and having them sing along with the computer. Of course they'd heard of songs like Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and Frosty, but when we'd gone thru all those "kid-friendly" songs, one kid requested Silent Night. So I looked it up online and put the words up for them. Being the obedient little Chinese kids that they are, they sang along as best they could, but I noticed some very puzzled looks on their faces when we got to parts in the song like "Round yon virgin, mother and child". I'm sure they were wondering "what the heck is a round yon virgin?". Now remember that most of these kids have grown up with zero religion, China being a communist country. In fact, we're not supposed to be saying anything about religion while teaching these kids, least of all Christianity I'm sure, but given the circumstances I couldn't really skip over it.
Terry, the English teacher, had already told them the Christmas story during her ESL lesson earlier that week, so they knew about baby Jesus, but I guess she hadn't gone into detail about how Mary had gotten pregnant with Jesus. Anyways, back to the song, the kids were very curious about this line, so we started talking about it. I tried to explain it to them by saying "well, you all know what a virgin is right? We talked about it during sex ed last month". Yes, they all remembered. "Well, Mary was a virgin when she was pregnant with Jesus". "But Mrs. Nairn, you told us you have to have sex to get pregnant". Shoot! "Yes, but Mary got pregnant because God made her pregnant without having sex". This was met with looks of disbelief from the kids, and was only exacerbated by me going on to tell about the angels in the sky singing to the shepherds below. I'm sure they were thinking "ya right, teacher" in their heads, but again, being Chinese, they would never challenge a teacher out loud like that (they believe this shows disrespect). So I said to them "Hmm, this might sound a little strange and far-fetched to you right now, eh?", to which one of our more mature kids responded, "Yes, but I'm sure you have a hard time believing all our old Chinese legends too." Touche! I really couldn't argue with him on this one.
Jay the Santa Clause in "Twas' the Night Before Christmas" presentation
Siare & Monica in a Starbucks skit
Jay, Monica, and Siare in the Starbucks skit
Jay, Monica, and Siare in the Starbucks skit
2 comments:
I am so impressed with the kids you teach!!
What a sweet story. It's cool that you got to share the real Christmas story with them. Did you tell them that is not just a legend?
Hey it was great talking to you again yesterday. You are such a rational, together girl (Andrew is so lucky, don't think there's many of you out there)! Thanks for being my friend.
Love,
L
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