Happy seasonal spending

Two students hold sign reading "Resisting Christmas. Chinese don't celebrate Western festival" on Christmas Eve in Changsha, Hunan province, on Wednesday. [Photo/chinanews.com]

On the contrary, it is merely another symbol of Chinese consumerism.

That the Chinese populace is beginning to consume Christmas decorations they used to make for Westerners does not mean they have found Jesus.

We see Santa Claus and Christmas decorations, and have earfuls of Jingle Bells long before Christmas. And almost invariably at shopping venues. To businesses, Christmas is no different than the artificial "Single's Day" on Nov 11, something they invented years ago to create a spending spree.

Christmas' recent popularity with the country's younger generations has little to do with Christianity. One may find plenty of youthful faces at Christian churches on Christmas Eve. Yet few are churchgoers at other times. Whatever one chooses to believe, our materialistic youth are still overwhelmingly atheist.

They love Christmas not because they love Jesus, but because it gives them one more excuse to hang out with loved ones, and to entertain and reward themselves.

Like many have correctly observed, Christmas, an all important Christian holiday, has been thoroughly transformed here. And the localized Christmas is hardly about Christianity. It is more like an annual carnival for the young and well-to-do.

Because of that, the authorities may want to embrace it as a precious driver of domestic demand.