While there is a minority group of devout Christians in Vietnam, Christmas here is out and out an insanely commercial holiday. It is not a national holiday but it's still celebrated like consumerism is going out of style. All the stores had sales and lights and fake trees with fake presents under them were everywhere. In downtown district 1, there were displays with fake snow, Santa, reindeer, snowmen made out of Styrofoam and lights, and all sorts of other festive decorations. My friend Mike has some awesome pictures over at his blog of one display that included a giant foil cannon. Check it out.
There is also an enormous light display in district 1 that I tried to take pictures of last week, but the lights weren't turned on until the day after Christmas for some reason... Another major fail, in my opinion, was the "tree" made out of giant, fake Corona beer bottles at the beer garden next to my house. Alas, I do not have pictures. It was too tacky and sad to warrant photographic evidence.
One rather odd and interesting fad here is that little kids wear Santa outfits for Christmas. They range from cheap material to nice, velvety ones and can be bought on virtually every street corner. The boys wear actual Santa outfits with hats and belts, and the girls where Santa dresses. I have no idea where or how this started, and I find it insanely bizarre, especially because Santa is supposed to be an old man with white hair and a beard, but I have to confess that my students looked adorable in their outfits. One student (my favorite, actually) even had a little fake beard with his outfit.
We had a Christmas concert at the elementary school I work at last Wednesday, the day before winter break, and all the students wore these outfits. This was too cute not to have photographic evidence of. (Note: I teach at an international school so all the students have English names that they go by... And a few of them actually have English names as their real names.)
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| All of the students in the school, including the Vietnamese program. |
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| Me with my main class. |
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| Their classroom teacher bought them all presents. They went crazy opening them. |
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| Tram Anh, my little 4 year old who doesn't speak any English aside from what I've taught her. |
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| Kevin. He's my favorite. |
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| Dean and Nick |
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| Sebastian and Colin, with Tyler in the background |
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| Tyler |
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| Bill. He and Colin are twins. |
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| Andy |
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| John |
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| Sebastian, singing in the concert |
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| Somehow I ended up without a good picture of Christine, so here's one of her between Sebastian and Andy while they were singing in the concert. |
One of the older classes also did two scenes from A Christmas Carol for the concert. Unfortunately, I don't have very good pictures of that, but here are a two:
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| Sam as Jacob Marley. |
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| Beth as the ghost of Christmas past and Kevin as Scrooge. |
I have a lot more pictures, but this post is already pretty full...
As for me, I spent Christmas day at my house, alternately cleaning my room, my bathroom, and the kitchen/living room floor and relaxing. I was invited to lunch at a friend's house, but the idea of spending Christmas with a room full of strangers made my stomach turn, so I didn't go. I did, however, get to talk to my family, which was brilliant. My dad has finally realized the advantages of turning on his Skype account as both he and one of my grandmas asked if they were seeing me in real time. Haha. Now let's see if he actually ever turns on his account. While my day wasn't exciting, it was still nice. Saturday's are my only days off, so I did what I always do.
I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and/or whatever holiday you celebrate, and that many good things come to you all in the new year. Much love.
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