To all of you a very merry Christmas, pleasant holidays with your families with lots of peace and joy! Here in China, Christmas is quite a curious thing! First thing to note is the apple: everyone here associates apples with Christmas, thus Christmas is a heyday for fruit sellers! The reason? Part of the word “apple” in Chinese has the same character as “peace” which is part of the word “Christmas” in this language. Therefore apples are the most common gifts on Christmas! Secondly, as we are talking about gifts already, let me tell you how Christmas gift shopping works here in China. While in the West, everyone tries to get the Christmas gifts before the holidays, in China, the day of Christmas-gift-shopping is just that: on Christmas. So, on December 24, everyone rushes out in search for some nice little gifts and the streets and stores on campus go crazy, especially the later it gets in the day! For us Westerners, though, we get to celebrate with our friends, and so we get to …

St. Nicolaus Day is not the kind of holiday anyone around here would know about. That, however, doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate it. Not that I really care about St. Nicolaus, but I like the presents that come with this day. Of course, I can’t expect any presents myself (nobody here knows about St. Nicolaus, remember?), but I still can have presents for others. So today, with the help of some of my students, I baked some cookies to give away to some of my friends. Now, it’s too late to give them to my friends in time for St. Nicolaus Day, but then – since no one really knows about it here anyways – who cares about such things as getting a present exactly on St. Nicolaus Day? I can give them their little gifts any other time, right?! Well then, happy St. Nicolaus Day!