A Tropical Christmas

This year's Christmas for us was...interesting. Hot, balmy weather, apartments with no chimneys...definitely made it harder for us to explain to our 2-year-old about a Jolly Old Man from a snowy North Pole (what snow?) riding on his sleigh to deliver presents to children. However, even Christmas is not an indigenous celebration in Asia, being the melting pot that Singapore is, along with the lucrative and ever-expanding commercial opportunities of the holiday season, the city was all donned up in its festive pastiche to channel in the Christmas spirit. It's quite impressive.
But even more impressive was how the church in Singapore strived to bring in the real, as cliche as it deemed, the reason for the season. Right in the heart of the city, along Orchard road where holiday consumerism indulged its reign, the churches in Singapore rented out a section of this real estate hotbed to set up the Christmas Village. It was about half-a-mile long of life-sized display and figurines that tell the world of the life and times, and most importantly, the good news of the Christmas story. Between displays stationed many participating charity organizations in Singapore, with a few internationally well-known NGOs such as World Vision and Compassion International. It's a simple but stark reminder, to us Christians especially, that Christmas is a season for giving, since celebrating the birth of Jesus is really remembering the very reason that he was born was to die and give himself up for us. I enjoy all the niceties in receiving and exchanging thoughtful and sometimes luxiours gifts with my loved ones, but sacrificial giving, to those we love and to those in need, whether it's time or money or anything, is what is required. Walking down that half-a-mile, giving Luke a play by play of the nativity story, meant much more to us than setting out milk and cookies for Santa or sipping hot chocolate by an open fire, as much as I was nostalgic about them.
On a more cynical note, Matt and I mused to ourselves that such a village can only exist in Singapore. Can you imagine the outcry from ACLU huffing and puffing about us oppressive Christians abridging the First Amendment if churches came out on the streets for Christmas? What travesty. And here we are in Singapore, walking among such christianity-fueled displays along with Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists, while it didn't even cross anybody's mind about offending or being offended. There's good and bad in it, but I do think people here take their civil liberties in a more down-to-earth way (although it's debatable to many whether civil liberties exist in Singapore, I'll leave the matter aside for the subject will take up a whole other blog in itself).