Advent is the ultimate German celebration: the family comes together on the last 4 Sunday afternoons before Christmas to eat cookies, play board games and generally prepare for Christmas. At least in our family.
So, lacking the German family, we invited some good friends of ours, and did exactly that: making and eating cookies, drinking Gluehwein and playing Trivial Pursuit. The decoration is out and making the place at least a little chrismassy. The green from the Christmas trees is hard to come by though, we has to try two markets before we could find some branches that didn't look like they had been fished out of last year's celebration and were not going by fantasy prices. It's funny when the little Chinese shopkeepers advertise their more or less pretty trees, saying that they're beautiful. I doubt that any of them know what we actually do with the trees and everyone probably finds it weird to have a tree in your flat for about two weeks and to then throw it out. Crazy Europeans....
There is one very christmasy event every year in Beijing: the Christmas market the day before 1st Advent at he German embassy. People queue for 2 hours to have a sip of Gluehwein, some Currywurst, buy and Adventscalendar and to east homemade cake. All the profits are donated to Charities in and around Beijing. The Christmas market and having listened to some Christmas songs this afternoon whilst baking cookies made me think of Christmas with all its glory and that it's time to come home for the holiday. The whole build-up, like Advent is just not the same in a country where the Christmas trees are mostly plastic and red (or blue, purple, silver, you name it). So, to make our days a bit more like the run-up to Christmas, we will post a seasonal picture each day before now and Christmas! Enjoy.....
1 comment:
nice post....but wondering why the people's party needs charities?
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