Although I am quite familiar with the origin and celebrations of Christmas Day, the most important festival in the western world, actually I’ve never got the idea of participating its crazy celebrations, which could terrify foreign guests.

Some of my classmates now are working as policemen. For them, Christmas Day is their yearly ultimate nightmare and disgusting experience. Just imagine millions of people gathering at Chunxi Road and Tianfu Square! Every moment is rush hour and all the major avenues are thronged with purposeless city dwellers. The police force must make sure the Christmas celebrations under control－ no one will be injured during the heavy traffic. Therefore to deal with this instant stream of people and cars, no policeman can stay at home as an outsider. The flood of people is sure to be their formidable “enemy” tonight. My friends complained as usual, “Where the hell do these people come from? ” “I have no hope of being quiet today!” I didn’t have such complains, but I understood them.

One of our unique Christmas celebrations is to use a sort of air-filled toy to hit one another on the face. I guess foreign friends never dream of that. If you intend to “fight” back, you are doomed. People will greet you with shouting, crying and air-filled toy hitting.

Years ago, when Christmas Day was coming, my classmates would go to the church to say Masses. I had serious doubts about that. If you don’t know anything about its origin and culture, why you go to the church? Just to be different from others?

If the Christmas holiday is an important celebration to honor the birth of Jesus Christ, why is it nowhere mentioned in the Bible? Why didn’t Christ instruct His closest followers, His 12 chosen apostles, to keep Christmas? Why didn’t they institute or teach it to the early Church?

Before you answer, consider that Jesus gave great authority to His 12 apostles, assuring them that they will hold positions of great importance and responsibility in His Kingdom (Matthew 18:18; 19:28; Luke 22:29-30). But since Jesus never taught His apostles to keep Christmas, nor did they ever teach it to the Church though they had years of opportunity to do so, shouldn’t that make us question whether Christmas is something Jesus really wants or appreciates?

So how did Christmas become such a widespread practice if the Bible doesn’t sanction it, if Christ didn’t observe it and if He never taught His disciples and the early Church to celebrate it?

Frankly these questions remain unanswered.

on Christmas Day, the world seems more concerned about all forms of pollution, wastefulness and the energy problem then. The tons of wrapping paper, boxes and bows, the cutting of millions of trees, seem wasteful to me. Then there are the countless gifts, given and received, that are unwanted and go unused. Maybe all that money and effort could be put to so much better use.

The increasing commercialism of Christmas bothers me, as it does many people. I read a newspaper article that said that there are many more depressed people, drunks, automobile accidents, family feuds and suicides at this time of year. The “good will toward men” that is supposed to prevail is not very apparent.

To lie to children about a fat man in a red suit may seem harmless to some people, but I question whether there is ever a reason to lie to children.

Besides more and more youngsters show a lack of traditinal values and virtues in China. They know more about Christmas (actually they don’t really understand what it is) than about Spring Festival. It is gonna be a cultural tragedy.

Natually although I am a major of English, I don’t celebrate Chritsmas.