A Thailand Christmas

Yesterday I celebrated my first Christmas in a foreign country. Christians are close to nonexistent here - 94.6% of the Thai population are Buddhist, 4.6% Muslim, and only 0.7% are Christian. I was away from my family, snow, Christmas trees, and a whole bunch of other things. However, one of my good Thai friends from school, who comes from a Christian family, invited me to go to Church with him and his family on Christmas Eve which was great fun. I'm not a frequent Church goer in America but I found that Church in Thailand was somewhat similar in a couple aspects yet very different in others.. Inside there was a big plastic Christmas tree along with other tacky Christmas decorations you might find at Wal-Mart. As the ceremony started, Thai children dressed in Santa outfits with big smiles on their faces came out dancing around playing their violins horribly out of tune. I really regret not bringing my camera now! After the kids serenaded us with their Christmas melodies the priest told a long story about Jesus of which I unfortunately only understood bits of. The rest of the ceremony was awesome. We all sang Christmas carols together and I was the only one singing Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, etc in English it was fantastic! It was pretty funny to hear those songs being sung in Thai. To finish the ceremony, some Thai kids acted out a brief skit about Christmas where King Herod became King Carrot and the Jesus baby ended up being a stuffed Tigger doll (from Winnie the Pooh) which was wrapped in a green blanket.

IMG_2448

A Thai Santa

Christmas day was fairly uneventful, however. I chose not to go to school and spent most of the day sleeping trying to shake a cold I had caught and woke up around 4 pm to find that Santa hadn't left any presents overnight... oh well. Later, my Mom and brother took me out to dinner to my favorite restaurant that serves good Western food and I stuffed myself with mashed potatoes, veggies, a steak, a whole pizza, and a salad. It felt good to eat Western food once again - I think I haven't had that kind of food in over a month or two. After that we went home and opened some presents my family in America had sent us and then climbed into bed with a full stomach.

Apart from not having any snow or many of the other things I associate Christmas with, Christmas wasn't so bad after all. I enjoyed seeing what the Christian Thais do to celebrate and teaching my Buddhist family about how we celebrate the holiday back in America. It doesn't matter that 95% of the population is Buddhist, Thai people just like having fun and are open and friendly to other religions. I even went to a Christmas party after Church with a handful of Buddhist Thais which was awesome. Give them a good excuse to have fun and they will celebrate just about anything! This year it was very, very different but certainly a Christmas to remember.