On December 1 ^st Emily and I went to visit a group of friends on the other side of Shanghai who were working in the school that had initially trained us. We went there, had a great weekend and on the way home looked in a few shops. Many of them were starting to sell Christmas goodies (China has lapped the abundance of special days that us foreigners have – Christmas, Valentines Day, Children’s day to name a few) and in the spirit of things I decided to buy a highly (non)comical father Christmas hat. It was a pretty cold day, so I wore it home and all the way through Shanghai where we spent the day surrounded by more familiar signs of civilisation – Starbucks being a particular favourite on a cold day.

I think it’s fair to say that the Santa hat really was the beginning of my Christmas problems.

The problem is that I am an absolute Christmas nut. I love it. Always have and always will. The year before, the 3 of us that lived in our flat in London spent about 3 weeks designing and making a pretty elaborate Christmas display for our Christmas party (which attracted all of about 8 people!). That year I had a Christmas party to go to each weekend in December. There were also numerous impromptu Christmas celebrations on the weekdays leading up to the 25 ^th . Then Christmas came and it was great, but over all too quickly.

So I bought the hat on December 1 ^st and was hoping for Christmas to begin from that moment. Now whilst the Chinese have embraced many things western, including these special days, they do not always know quite how to use them as they were intended. I am not saying that the way they use them is better or worse, just that it’s not the way they were intended to be used and therefore a little strange to me. Christmas is one of them. The decorations are up (and never taken down after – Santa’s effigy is still watching the bowling in mid July in Jinshan) and people are talking about it and buying presents, but there is no real understanding of the day (regardless of how much we tend to neglect the religious meaning, we still know it) and what it represents.

So in the 3 and a half weeks that followed the purchase of my Santa hat, my enthusiasm for the big day gradually withered away. I thought more and more about why I love Christmas so much – being with family and friends, being around complete strangers who are happier and more relaxed towards other complete strangers than they are at any time in the year – and I could clearly see that none of this was happening where I was and I missed what I was used to and wanted even more.

Getting food poisoning and catching a heavy cold a week before did not help matters either.

So Christmas Day came. I was sick. I had to work in the evening – a written exam – as there is, perhaps obviously, no day off for Christmas in a country whose national faith is not Christianity. Now there were some pretty fun times to be had on the day and on Christmas Eve – an argument with one of my middle school teacher colleagues (Chinese), for example, who was adamant that we celebrated Christmas on 24 ^th December and then went back to work on 25 ^th (he’d never been outside China, by the way). There was also the middle schools performance of some random semi-themed Christmas plays in English (one of them was about a Japanese tourist on a bus who lost her money – still can’t make the connection) and their singing of Christmas carols by candle light which really was quite beautiful. There was also the tongue twister competition which they made me take part in – I had to compete against a local English teacher (a Chinese man – the same one who argued that Christmas is celebrated on 24 ^th December, come to think of it) to see who could say it the most times in one minute. He promised he would ‘win me’ which got me slightly worried, as I wasn’t aware that I was the prize to be won. Anyway, I nearly fell of my perch when he began, in front of about 200 12 – 16 year olds, saying as quickly as possible that "long legged ladies last longer"! See my point about some things from overseas not being completely understood?