Grinch or grin?

It is an individual's freedom to celebrate or ignore any holiday. The urge to frame it too narrowly could backfire when kindred spirits with different paths see it as cultural superimposing or fun lovers keep a blind eye to its origin or nuances.

When it comes to Christmas, I always thought I would be a Grinch. I hate to prepare presents and I don't love getting one, either. Ever since I went through the grinding mill of business school in the United States, I'm convinced that the holiday is designed to ramp up sales of unnecessary and overstocked merchandise.

Recent news photos of young Chinese holding up plaques boycotting Christmas simply negated my self-evaluation: I'm not a Grinch after all. At worst I'm just another grumpy old man. It's funny I've never come across one of the protesters in real life.

According to one online estimate, some 40 percent of respondents take their side, which means almost half of those around me would hate it if I say "merry Christmas" to them. But then my circle of acquaintances and colleagues could be too cosmopolitan or globalized - atypical of the online sample.

I read somewhere that the Asian nation of Brunei has just banned Christmas, and violators will be fined up to $20,000, up to five years in prison, or both. Had Chinese introduced the same law, I guess some of the same protesters would again protest - for the simple reason that it will deprive them of one day of frolicking.

You see, the biggest complaint about Christmas is it's Western and it's religious. But any careful observer of Christmas celebrations in the Middle Kingdom will come to the realization that it has very different connotations, at least among the majority of Chinese celebrants.

Unlike the US cities in which I have lived where Christmas Eve is a time of peace and quiet, young Chinese swarm to posh restaurants and clubs to kick back. Sure, some would think of going to a church afterwards, but most sites would be cordoned off, possibly to keep away these nonbelievers who see the religious venue as an ad-hoc club for partying.

In other words, Christmas in China is essentially a prequel to New Year's Day, which, if you come to terms with it, is also a Western holiday, albeit with few hints of faith in it. Only when you use the Gregorian calendar would the New Year fall on this day.

Using the logic of the boycotters, we should probably stick to the Lunar New Year since our ancestors used the lunar calendar.

If I were a Christmas purist, I would be protesting that the holiday is being sapped of its religious meaning and turned into another opportunity for impious activities.

I did not know of the origin of Christmas until recent years when I learned that nobody actually knew the birthday of Jesus Christ and that it was designated as such hundreds of years later when Christianity spread to parts of Europe and incorporated some pagan holiday. Now I'm no history buff and know even less about religions.

My first culture shock came when I greeted a friend of mine who was a devout Christian by saying "merry Christmas" to him. Rather than being pleased, he coldly replied that he and his family did not celebrate it. I tried to find out why but was deterred.

Christianity has so many sects and denominations that practices must vary from one to another, I thought. I'd better be politically correct and refrain from blurting out more offensive stuff.

A politically correct greeting, it seems to me, demands we correctly identify each person's race and religion, among a slew of identity tags.

In the United States, you'd have to say "happy Hanukkah" and "happy Kwanzaa" on top of "merry Christmas". But what if the target is someone who converted from Christianity to Judaism, or an African-American who became Buddhist?

Fortunately there is the all-inclusive "season's greetings" so you avoid the mention of a specific holiday.

But the logic still holds. If you say "happy New Year" to a dozen people who belong to 12 ethnicities, each with a different day for the occasion, each one could give you the look as if you've committed the biggest blunder of racial insensitivity.

This is not a black comedy scenario I have just invented. It is happening all over the world, including the US and China - albeit not to that scale. Someone who does not celebrate Christmas and is offended by "merry Christmas" is taking the origin of the holiday too seriously. There seems to an assumption that one who is greeted must be a Christian, or rather, a Christian of certain denominations.

The intertwining of religion and ethnicity has further complicated the matter. And forget about conversion.

Basically, I've figured out that unless one wears a tag that says "I celebrate Christmas" it is unsafe to bring up the name of the holiday even if you're carried away with too much caroling.

China's relentless drive to import major Western holidays and secularize or localize them, to a degree, is not bad. Yes, there is a whiff of vanity behind the association with Western customs.

But there is no loyalty whatsoever. It is just one more excuse to sell or buy something. Left to the Jack Mas of the world, every day could be turned into a holiday. Just witness Singles Day, which took just three years to become the most populous nation's biggest shopping day - bigger than Thanksgiving and Christmas combined.

Just as we have two sets of holidays, based on the two calendars, we don't mind adding some more. You can criticize all you want the vulgar commercialization of traditional holidays and festivals, but one thing it is not is fundamentalism. It is very tolerant of customs and lifestyles from different parts of the world.

The way I see it, most Chinese who celebrate Christmas just want to have fun. You can call it "mock Christmas" if you want. By no means does it hint at their religious and political bent.

Likewise, grandstanding is the reason behind those who openly boycott it. There is a palpable sense of play-acting in their costumes, postures and expressions. It's a "mock protest" so to speak.

If you ask them to swear off anything Western, they'd think you're crazy.

When I first heard of the word "Christmas" (shengdan, or literally sacred birth), the meaning did not dawn on me. I intuited it was the Western equivalent of the Spring Festival. With the pervasive use of homonyms, I now often receive written greetings that spell out "leftover eggs" for "shengdan".

If the trend persists, future Chinese may equate Dec 25 with a feast and bar-hopping followed by bingeing on leftover food the next day.

Contact the writer at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 01/04/2016 page10)