On not talking about Christmas

In the comments section of the Confucians vs. Christmas post, “cat” writes the following:

I got into work at CCTV-9 on Christmas Eve, my heart sinking when I remembered I’d be facing a stream of the same old “China is embracing Christmas” and “Santas on rollercoasters” stories that we dust off every year like old decorations that should have been given to a charity shop ages ago. But when I opened up the editing system on my computer, there was the glorious all-users message: “No reports with content about Christmas are to be included in any news broadcasts”.

O tidings of comfort and joy!

Maybe we have the PhD students to thank for this merciful release. They came to save us all from Santa’s power when we were gone astray.

Zeng Pengyu, a reporter at Beijing Youth Daily who blogs under the name “Xiao Fei Dao”, writes about how the Chinese media handles this sort of advisory:

A holiday of self-deception

As in years past, the word “Christmas” (圣诞节) once again is not allowed to appear in news reports. In past years there were explanations for this – something like it being meant to protect national culture for example – but this year there was nothing. However, reports were prohibited all the same – can national culture be protected by banning reports of a foreign holiday?

This stuff became an “hidden rule” about six or seven years ago. Suddenly, one day, “Christmas” was exiled from the news sections of the media. The first year, the media was quite conscientious, and newspapers on 25 December had nothing to do with old Grandpa Jesus. Following close behind in exile was “Valentine’s Day”. At that time, a kind of blue rose called “Blue Charmer” (蓝色妖姬) was very popular, and on 15 February, you could see in every newspaper reports that “blue roses sell out,” but not a word said why – it was a complete mystery.

Later on things were even more fun. “Christmas” couldn’t appear, so intellectuals who enjoyed playing language games used another word, “Silent Night” (平安夜). If “Silent Night” were to be banned, then use “the night of 24 December” – ha! you’d have to have a lot of guts to ban that one, too, turning a year into 364 days – this is what’s really meant by a “a long history, flowing far away from the source”….

When I flipped through the papers when I got up today [25th], all the papers were quite obedient – no mention of “Christmas” in the news section. But the advertising section of every paper had boxes aflame with Christmas celebration, and in some, the entire ad was just the line, “Enjoy a relaxing Christmas,” with “Christmas” (圣诞) in larger type than the front-page headline. You had to laugh – the world may be fake, but it has its occasional genuine moments. The key is that this authenticity is hammered out with money.

As for Valentine’s Day, hmm, let’s not say anything about that, OK – in this day and age, a lover isn’t necessary to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and banning Valentine’s Day won’t necessarily bring about purity. At any rate, corrupt officials definitely have more lovers than us common folk.

Though they weren’t in the pages of a newspaper, Christmas trees appeared in the halls of various work units; even the gate to my community had one. Looking around, it wasn’t much special, and even if I wanted to join in the fun by celebrating Christmas, it wouldn’t turn me into a foreigner.

And even those real foreigners – their president issues New Year’s greetings to Chinese-Americans every year at the Spring Festival, but I’ve never seen us congratulate foreign citizens at Christmas. And now you can’t even say the word – it really is tacky, and how we’re always saying we’re 5000 years old – a 5000-year-old going up against a 200-year-old, how lame is that?

Throwing in a popular expression, this is a matter of cultural self-confidence.