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香港人总是很乐于接受新鲜事物，但你不觉得他们１０月底就迎接圣诞，这有点太夸张了吗？
当我看到某商店橱窗里的圣诞老人时，我问店主为什么这么早就把圣诞老人搬出来，在那里展览两个月？他的回答是，圣诞节是那么“美丽”，所以他想成为第一个庆祝这个节日的人。当然，其实他是想更多人光顾他的小店。
我想他是切中要害了。圣诞节对于香港来说，只是一个招揽顾客的节日，让那些除了购物就不知道干什么好的人买更多没用的东西。在香港，圣诞节开始于１１月初，到处都是圣诞音乐，简直要令我发疯了。
我想没准儿是香港人发明了圣诞节吧，他们从这个节日上面可赚了不少钱。哦，不对，我想起来了，是耶稣创造了圣诞节。也许有人听到圣诞节是为了庆祝耶稣的生日会感到惊奇吧？其他的东西，像圣诞老人、圣诞树、小矮人、天使什么的，都是后来才出现的。
我们是为了纪念一个先知，一个改变了世界的人的生日。然而现在我们要对耶稣说的是：“让我们把每年你生日的那一天变成一个百万美元的商机吧！”
当我在挪威的时候，我最不喜欢过圣诞了。我们要给每一个认识的人买圣诞礼物，给认识或不认识的人寄愚蠢的圣诞卡片。更糟糕的是，我们必须在家里待３天，这引来了多少争吵啊，更别说那些拥挤的航班了。和家人每天都见面，而现在还要在家里一起呆坐着，除了吃、喝、看电视，没别的事情可做。这真是太痛苦了。我想去找朋友们，但他们都要和家人在一起。
所以当我在１９８８年刚到北京时，我觉得自己到了一个没有圣诞的世界里。圣诞的那个星期在中国和平时没有什么不同。圣诞夜我去了挪威大使馆参加了一个聚会，喝得醉醺醺的，第二天就又恢复了平静。这就对了，而且在１２月和１月中国人都在准备过春节，这是一个没有圣诞节的世界！我喜欢。
后来我到了香港，发现这里的圣诞节比挪威还要糟糕。因为在挪威，欢乐和互相送礼的气氛背后至少还有雪、黑夜和一种庄严的气氛。我们望着星空，踩着积雪漫步，想着宇宙间的真理。家里熊熊的炉火在燃烧，午夜教堂的钟声在敲响，收音机里播放着男孩唱诗班吟唱的圣诞颂歌。
而在香港，这天就是一个购物的日子，一点儿也找不到圣诞的感觉。没人会觉得中国人与耶稣有什么关系，为什么你们要过这个节日呢？也许一开始，这只是英国人强加的一个节日，香港人并不热衷，然而他们现在是愈发热爱这个节日了。
前年我为了逃避香港那充满商业化的圣诞节，坐火车去了四川。你猜我看到了什么？内地也开始过圣诞节了。西昌这个小城到处是圣诞饰品。我住的小店里的店员都穿着俗气的圣诞装，在前台有一个巨大的充气圣诞老人在仁慈地迎接顾客，周围摆放着一些虚假的圣诞礼物。
去年我又再次出逃，想找到一个没有圣诞节的地方。这次我到了广东省的一个偏僻的小地方。我没意识到这里很冷，我也没想到这会是噩梦般的一个圣诞之夜。由于没有足够的衣服，我浑身发抖地坐在旅馆屋子里，听着带迪斯科旋律的“铃儿响叮当”。打扮成圣诞老人的店员，向发呆的人群分发糖果。
不管如何称呼，圣诞节其实在世界各地都一样，一种发疯的购买各种没用东西的举动。如果耶稣真的回来了，他也许会被迫站在超市门口，戴着圣诞帽，摇着铃铛，闪着灯，向你说“大家节日快乐”。
（本文作者系挪威专栏作家，现定居香港）
Merry Bloody Christmas – pass me the Prozac
By Cecilie Gamst Berg
Hong Kong people have never been known for doing
things slowly or for being hesitant to pick up a new trend. But surely even they
must think putting up Christmas decorations at the end of October is a little
bit exaggerated?
When I saw that Christmas decoration in a shop window – I think it was
Santa Claus holding a bottle of beer, I had to ask the shop owner why. Why do we
have to live through this nightmare that is Christmas in Hong Kong, for two
whole months? He said Christmas was “beautiful” and that he wanted to be the
first to start celebrating it. Also, he hoped it would bring in more customers.
Well, he hit the nail on the head there. Christmas in Hong Kong, as indeed
it is getting to be all over the world, is all about getting more customers and
selling more useless crap to people who have nothing better to do than go
shopping.
Here in Hong Kong, Christmas starts in earnest in the beginning
of November. Every shop, every lift, every office and hotel corridor, yes even
underground car parks have piped Christmas music of the worst kind and it’s
driving me insane as I’m very sensitive to noise. I’m afraid to go out
sometimes, because I know I’m going to be assaulted with the horrible
pling-plong and bippety-bopping modern take on Christmas songs wherever I
go.
I wonder who invented Christmas. It must have been a Hong Kong person,
because in Hong Kong they make more out of Christmas, and more money out of
Christmas, than any place I’ve ever seen.
But hang on...Christmas...Christ...Oh yes of course! It was Christ who
invented Christmas, wasn’t it! Jesus Christ to be exact. Yes it would come as a
surprise to a lot of people to hear that Christmas was actually originally meant
to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, saviour of humanity and instigator of,
well, Christianity.
Santa Claus, Christmas trees, elves, angels, tinsel, glitter and
snowflakes, all that came later. The original idea behind Christmas was to
celebrate the man who started our western year zero.
Of course he wasn’t
born in December in the year zero at all, but rather around March, or perhaps
another month, in a completely different year. The truth is, nobody knows when
he was born. However, to coincide with the old pagan European festivals,
celebrating the winter solstice rather than God or the son of, it was considered
practical to let Christmas occur on the 24/25th of December.
The Christians actually hijacked the ancient Roman and Greek “pagan” sun
festivals and made them theirs. This was the major marketing coup of the first
century. Get those people who are dancing around the streets, celebrating
the sun god to celebrate our God (whom we have created in our own image)
instead! Simple, practical and few overheads.
Now, although I am no Christian and in fact loath all organised religion
with an astonishing force, I do appreciate that Jesus is a real historical
figure. Whether he was really the Son of God, born of a virgin, is perhaps a
little more doubtful. It’s probably more realistic to think he was the son of a
woman who wanted her fiancee not to ditch her because she’d slept with another
man, and so she came up with a brilliant idea of having been “visited” by an
angel and made pregnant by God himself.
What fiancee wouldn’t buy that story! And so Maria’s future relationship
with Joseph was saved, indeed not enhanced not a little by letting him become
the stepfather of the son of God.
Jesus grew up to become a smart and fascinating human being whose ideas
were truly revolutionary. In a time when life was cheap and violence rampant, he
preached peace, compassion and understanding. He wanted to get rid of prejudice,
petty-mindedness and discrimination.
No matter if you believe all that stuff in the bible about Jesus walking on
the water and waking people from the dead, there’s no getting away from his
powerful messages of loving your fellow human being like you love yourself and
that only those who are without sin have the right to criticize others.
The bible was written by people who lived hundreds of years after Jesus and
they have added things to his message that were suitable for their times, and
taken other things away. A lot of it they have just made up to scare people.
But the central message of Jesus’ teachings: Love, peace and hope, rings as
clear today as it did 2000 years ago.
This is supposed to be the reason why we celebrate Christmas. It is to
celebrate the birth and life of a prophet, a visionary and a man who changed the
world. But what do we say to Jesus?
“Excellent dude, let’s make your
birthday the year Zero and celebrate it every year by turning your birthday into
a billion-dollar industry!”
When I lived in Norway, Christmas was the time of year I hated most. We had
to buy expensive presents for everybody we knew, were forced to send idiotic
Christmas cards to everybody we knew and didn’t know, and worst of all: Were
forced to spend three days locked up in the house together with the family, with
the inevitable quarrels and petty squabbles, as well as the huge, drawn out
fights such a situation calls for. After a year of seeing each other at meals
and hardly then, the family was now sitting around the living room table for
days on end with nothing to do but eat, drink and watch tv. It was torture. I
wanted to be with my friends, but they were stuck with their families in similar
scenario.
I was therefore very happy when I came to Beijing in 1988 and found a world
devoid of Christmas.The Christmas week could have been any week of the year in
China. I went to a drunken party at the Norwegian Embassy and that was it. On
Christmas Day everything was back to its normal utilatarian self. And too right
– after all, in December and January Chinese people would be preparing for
Spring festival. A world without Christmas! That is the Chinese way! I loved
it.
Or I thought that would be the Chinese way until I came to Hong Kong and
found a Christmas even worse than that in Norway. Worse, because in Norway at
least we had snow, darkness and a kind of solemn spirit behind all the enforced
jollyness and gift-giving. We could wander around on crunching snow under the
stars and think about universal truths, while the log fires were burning at
home, the midnight church bells tolled and the radio played Christmas carols in
their orignal form, hauntingly sung in a cathedral by a boy choir.
In Hong Kong, Christmas was a frenetic shopping nightmare with all the
Christmas feeling removed. Nobody would think Christmas had anything to do with
Christ, and why should it? For Hong Kong people it was just a holiday forced
upon them by British imperialists, reluctantly and uncomprehending at first,
perhaps; then with more and more enthusiasm.
Now the entire city is a glittering, screaming, tinsel-filled, blink-blonk
music’ed hell-hole. The thing is with 25 degrees and blue (if very polluted)
skies, it looks all wrong. Supermarket and drug store shop assistants stand
around wearing red and white Santa Claus hats, looking pained. And so they
should; it’s the middle of November.
Hour after hour they’re forced to stand there listening to the same reel of
horrible music playing over and over again; as a customer at least I can get out
of there as soon as I’ve paid. Surely listening to this awful noise would
constitute torture, or at least sickness-inducing work conditions?
After 1997 I was hoping that we would lose the ludicrous spectacle that is
Christmas, with every skyscraper in the city decorated in garish colours with
“cute” motifs of Santa Claus, (who lives in Norway by the way; NOT Finland)
reindeer, bells and Christmas trees and the odd Hello Kitty thrown in, as well
as Disney figures festively decked out in various hues of red and green.
I was hoping that the Chinese government would put its foot down, calling
Christmas an imperialist Western folly that weakens and corrupts youth. But no,
since 1997 things have actually got even worse. Christmas starts one week
earlier every year – if it carries on like this we’ll be hearing the damned
Christmas songs played just after Easter!
And don’t get me started on Easter. Why the hell do we have to celebrate
that? Do Hong Kong people, in general, really care about Jesus being hammered on
a cross and left to die give or take 2000 years ago? And anyway, if these
holidays are Christian holidays that we must follow, how come Christmas is at
the same time every year but Easter pops up at completely different times from
year to year, and when you least expect it?
Of course Easter is, like Christmas, just a hollow excuse to get people out
of their houses to spend spend spend.
Now we have the ridiculous situation where, no sooner have we taken down
the Christmas decorations for the annual twenty minutes after having celebrated
long and hard Christmas and New Year’s Eve, before we immediately start on
Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year (�"年) as we call it. It’s interesting to
note that while mainlanders get a month off during Spring Festival, Hong Kong
people are getting fewer and fewer days off every year and are now down, I
believe, to zero.
For example, when I came to Hong Kong 15 years ago, the supermarkets were
closed for three days during this festival. Now they are open for the duration,
and more or less 24 hours a day…
Anyway, the Spring Festival lasts well
into February, and then it’s time for Easter. That’s about six months of the
year taken up with window displays, music and neon decorations on buildings.
In addition we have Ching Ming, July 1st to celebrate the handover, that’s
a week gone, as well as October 1st to celebrate China’s national day, another
week, then there’s the Yeung Chung festival, the Hungry Ghost festival…The
whole year is taken up with festivals, which here in Hong Kong means that most
foreigners take a week off work every time and go away on holiday.
That is good for them but terrible for me, because when I can’t teach
Cantonese to foreigners I have no income.
But back to Christmas – the year before last I’d had enough of
ultra-commercial Christmas in Hong Kong and got on the train heading for Sichuan
province. But what do you know? Christmas has come to China, officially a
non-Christian country, too.
The little town of Xichang was fully decked out in Christmas decorations.
The staff in the little hotel I stayed in were all dressed in garish costumes,
and in reception a gigantic blow-up plastic model of Santa Claus stood
benevolently receiving guests, surrounded by fake Christmas presents.
Last year I tried again. I wanted to find a place without Christmas! Back
on the train I went, this time to the inner and upper reaches of Guangdong
province.I didn’t realise it would be absolutely freezing, and I had no idea it
would be a Christmas nightmare. With not enough clothes I sat shivering in the
hotel room on Christmas Eve, listening to “Jingle Bells” with disco-rhytm,
blaring through the streets where people dressed as Santa Claus stood outside
every shop, handing out sweets to bemused people. Perhaps this was their first
encounter with Christmas the Hong Kong way.
Or Christmas the global way, rather. For Christmas has lost any pretence of
being about Christ. Indeed in the United States, ever fearful of being
politically incorrect and afraid of upsetting religious groups, the don’t even
call it “Christmas” anymore. “Holiday” it’s become over the last few years, and
“Merry Christmas” has turned into “Happy Holidays.”
Apart from calling it different things: Christmas is the same all over the
world; a mad rush to buy more and more things nobody needs, heart-rendingly ugly
Christmas decorations seemingly put together by drunken four-year olds, and the
infernal music playing round the clock. If Jesus indeed came back, as the
Christians keep going on about, he’d be forced to stand in the supermarket,
wrapped in tinsel and flashing lights and wearing a Santa Claus hat, going
“Happy Holidays everybody!”
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