Christmas in Shenyang

Dear Friends and Family

Christmas in China's northeast is not always white, but it is always cold. On the Sunday before Christmas, the overnight low was 13 degrees Fahrenheit and the daytime high was 5 degrees. Despite the cold, the worshipers at Bei Shi Church started to line up outside by 7:30 a.m. By 8:00, when the first service let out, the line of people, several abreast, was more than a block long and included most of the 1500 people who would attend the 9:00 service. This scene is repeated every week of the year, not just at Christmas time.

I have been attending Bei Shi Church since I first came to Shenyang as an English teacher in September 1998. This church owns and occupies its own new, four-story building. The sanctuary is on the third floor. There is overflow seating on the first, second, and fourth floors where the congregation watches the service on closed circuit television. The first two pews in the sanctuary, next to the grand piano and facing the choir, are reserved for foreigners. Since I am usually the only westerner at the 9:00 service, I have, in effect, my own pew.

As the only foreigner in this large congregation, my presence is very obvious and affirms the shared faith that unites us in Christ despite our very different cultures and life styles. Although I can communicate with the church people only by smiles and simple greetings, my presence at worship seems important to the congregation. One Sunday, as I was riding the bus home from church, an old Chinese woman tapped me on the arm, opened her Bible with a smile, and carefully (almost reverently) drew out a picture of the two of us taken at church over a year ago. That particular Sunday had been "picture day" and many members of the choir and the congregation had asked me to pose with them. At the time I felt somewhat like an animal in a zoo, but I complied because it seemed so important to the people of the church. I still do not understand why this picture taking was so significant, but I sense that God was somehow at work in the situation.

For the last two years, on Christmas Day I have been asked to stand with the pastors at the front of the church and sing "Silent Night" in English with them. The prospect of singing in front of 1500 people is terrifying, but each year the pastors insist. As I look out over the congregation and gaze into the faces of the believers, I see that they are moved by my participation in the worship service. At the same time I am blessed by the sense of joy and peace which so many of the older believers radiate.

Outside the church, the commercialization of Christmas is proceeding at an alarming rate. In December I visited Carre Four, a French chain that has recently come to China. The stores are huge, like the giant discount stores in the States that carry everything from groceries to clothes to food to household furnishings. One whole aisle was full of Christmas merchandise—artificial trees, ornaments, cards, candles—and the Chinese were buying just as eagerly as Americans at a pre-Christmas sale.

The increasing popularity of Christmas has affected church attendance in a surprising way. For the last few years it has been popular for non-believers, especially young adults, to throng to the churches on Christmas Eve to see what this holiday is all about. In fact, the pastor of Bei Shi warned the old people and the foreigners (me) not to attend because of the crowds. The churches recognized that Christmas Eve was an important opportunity for evangelism, but the crowds in the past were staggering.

This Christmas, however, the situation changed. My pastor friends at the seminary told me that attendance on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was down significantly because there were fewer sightseers this year. The pastors explain the phenomenon in this way: Starting in the 1990s, Christmas became popular in China because there was a fascination with all things Western and Christmas was known as the most important Western holiday. Since Christian churches were the only "Christmas act" in town, Chinese people flocked to the churches to "celebrate Christmas." Now, however, there are other options. The big hotels put up elaborate decorations, including nativity scenes, and organize expensive all-night parties. Student and faculty groups also hold Christmas parties. This year on Christmas Eve, each of my four classes rented part of a restaurant and spent the whole night eating, drinking, singing karaoke, and watching movies.

The marketing of Christmas in China has been brilliantly successful. Here, where Christians constitute perhaps one percent of the population, Christmas is now big business. This trend, however, poses a new challenge to the churches: how to impart the true meaning of Christmas now that non-believers no longer come to the churches at Christmas time.

Let us join the Chinese churches in praying that this secular and commercial interest in Christmas might somehow be transformed into an opportunity for Chinese Christians to share the true meaning of Christmas with their fellow Chinese.

In Christ's love,

Barbara Maynard Penney