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Merry Christmas Around the World
Do you have any cool Christmas stuff worth sharing–pictures, videos, stories, etc.–from places you’ve been and loved? Here are three of mine.
My favorite Christmas song from the good old days in Sanyati Baptist Mission in rural Zimbabwe is # 7 from the Shona Baptist Hymnal, “Ndiani Kudanga’ko.” It’s the Shona translation of the hymn “Who Is He in Yonder Stall?” Here’s a YouTube version from some Reformation Christians in Harare (Zimbabwe’s capital city):
And here’s a Christmas song in Urdu from Pakistani Christians:
Can you believe it? Seven people on the internet clicked the thumbs-down button on that!
And here’s the Santa Claus roller coaster display in Friendswood, Texas, each year:
Ok, now it’s your turn!
Published in General
I really like the music videos. I can’t think of anything at the moment along those lines, but I’m sure that with the wide range of experiences among the Ricochetti that there must be others.
Indeed.
Just places I thought it was done right.
Japan doesn’t have a Christian tradition so for them the day doesn’t have significance as it does in the West but they seem to have adopted the day as an important date holiday.
I once spent Christmas day in a coffee growing town in the Andes mountains. The place was so poor that the one room shack of a church had exactly one “FELIZ NAVIDAD” banner hanging up for decoration. That’s it. It was a good time regardless. Sort of a pre-Grinch-repentance Whoville.
Ten o’clock at night one Christmas day, I was hanging upside down from my seatbelt in a ditch off the iciest road I’ve ever traversed in Northern Wisconsin. Neither I or the driver were at all injured, but the truck was totaled.
This sounds like Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects.
[edit]
Didn’t realize I clumsily posted this in the wrong conversation.
Christmas in Hong Kong is remarkably like America: some religion, but also some vague notion of general good will, some clean fun for children, and lots of sales and shopping.
Lovely lights displays have been a Hong Kong Christmas heritage. Here’s an intro if anyone wants to look over some of them.
Here is the 2020 Christmas display in front of one of Bangkok’s malls. Sponsored by Citibank, of course. Not sure what monstrosity will appear yet this year.
2020 Christmas Display
That was beautiful.
I poked around the other videos, however, and watched this sad one about bans on Christmas celebrations outside Beijing. The teacher in one of the classrooms was teaching the students that December 26 is Mao’s birthday.
I wonder when China will ever have it glasnost Lenin- and Stalin-condemning moment when it acknowledges Mao and his wife’s terrible evil to the Chinese people. The Chinese are very close to the Russians, as friendly nations go. I’m surprised that Russia’s period of enlightenment has never inspired China. Or that the young people’s travel to western European and American schools has not inspired an investigation into the Cultural Revolution as well as so many other horrors that Mao and his wife wreaked upon China. I wonder if China will finally investigate Mao when Xi Jinping retires for one reason or another. Of course, he’s only 68. He could be in power for a very long time. He worships Mao and the Communists of the past.
I have nothing to say.
I don’t understand.
Is my understanding of modern history in Russia and China inaccurate? If so, it would not surprise me. :-)
Another “Ndiani”:
Your hope is inspiring.