Chinese Christmas? What a paradox.

What is Christmas like in a country that doesn't recognize the holiday?  Simply summarized, very unique!  Being token foreigners, one thing we did was hold a Christmas concert, as is tradition at our school.

Let me recount some of these memorable Christmas moments.

A student gave me a Christmas gift!  This has the head of a dragon attached to a blossoming flower.  I was floored to get a gift from a student.  How nice and flattering.  Turns out this is a common pen holder!  How cool!

Preparing for the Christmas concert, I rehearsed with soloists and in the music room is this guzheng 古筝 (a "zither" in English) which my student, Silvia, can play.  Before we rehearsed we simply had fun chatting and exchanging music.

For one class, my students picked a Christmas song and made pictures based on the lyrics.  Here in "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" are the lyrics "Later we'll have some Pumpkin Pie".  What better way than to have Silence and Messi pie Michael in the face?  Poor Michael lost the coin toss.

In the same fashion as above, the girls' group sang "Here Comes Santa Claus" and thanks to my horrible photoshop skills, we have Susan as a hilarious Chinese female Santa Claus!

Another group chose "Home for the Holidays" and the lyrics "I met a man who lives in Tennessee, and he was headin for Pennsylvania..." lend themselves to a long road trip.

In our last-minute rehearsals, the students also helped me decorate!  Note how big the bow is.  I think it's fantastic as Catherine shows it off.

The Christmas decorated auditorium reading for the following day's concert.

Here name is NoNo and she has a beautiful voice as she sings the intro verse to "When Christmas comes to Town"

The class voted to simply sing a song, but I made sure they were like a choir for that.  All in red and fully rehearsed, they sounded good.

Zoe played the accompaniment.  This was amazing as she and another student, Trista, learned the music in only one week after learning that their classmate couldn't play it.  Trista did very well, but when Zoe sat down, she had the whole thing completely memorized!

11th graders singing "When Christmas Comes to Town" opening our 2010 Christmas concert.

The exchange students performing their  "Santa in China" skit.  On the left is Klaus Markus, German, playing Santa Klaus.  He's wearing a traditional Beijing opera mask.  Max, the American, stands to the right.

This student from the China--Australia class is performing a Latin dance at the Christmas concert.  I don't know what Latin dancing has to do with Christmas, but that didn't stop the Chinese from including it.  We four foreign teachers had planned our programs to last 50 minutes--perfect.  At the last minute we heard they were adding acts (none of which related to Christmas, actually).  The concert went from 50 minutes to 2 hours.  This is China.

Michael, a foreign teacher here, wanted students to learn the story of Christmas as they performed the nativity play using their bedsheets as the perfect costumes.

Remember the pictures that my classes made?  One group chose Feliz Navidad and never came up with any picture ideas.  So I decided they would dance.  And they did--it went over great, actually.  (Note who's the 3rd person in the row.)

Another shot from the Feliz Navidad group.  Here in front is Swave (that's his name).  He's at the top of the class and a really positive student.  What a great beaming smile.

Here's the students in concert with photo backgrounds.  They sang "You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear" with this in the background.

The full layout of the Feliz Navidad dance.  I thank marching band, which totally helped me plan the stage positioning (blocking).

L-R, (me), Ellen, Jim, Della, & Ms. Dong.  Ellen and Della are our Chinese liaisons (unfortunately, Michael and Sean took off right after the concert, so they were not around for the photo.)

Merry Christmas!