Happy Holidays!!

I saw an episode of Everybody Hates Chris where Chris’ family converts to Kwanzaa so the dad will not have to pay for Christmas gifts for family and friends. The Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, holiday, et al season in Hong Kong is just about the opposite experience.

The holiday season in Hong Kong begins with American and Canadian Hong Kong expats celebrating Thanksgiving on the 27th of Nov. The season has the traditional buildup to Christmas that one would expect in the US. Instead of aurally filling the time with Mariah Carey and Frank Sinatra singing Christmas songs, however, stores in Hong Kong are just as likely to play full length Christmas hymns and carols: not just the verses with the asterisk.

Christmas itself was an interesting time too because in Hong Kong, crowds count down to Christmas Day a la New Years Eve. I wondered if this was an abnormal trend but one of the friends I was out with called his mom at 12:05 to wish her Merry Christmas. The scene was repeated 6 days later when we all counted down to the Gregorian New Year. Perhaps one of the only benefits to a 12-hour time differential is that everyone I want to talk to in the US is wake when I my clock strikes 12.

But the fun is not over still. As soon as the lovely fir was removed from my apartment building, Chinese New Year decorations went up. Depending on when the lunar new year falls in the Western calendar, Chinese New Year is celebrated anywhere between mid-January and the end of February. In 2009, the Chinese calendar year 4707 will begin on January 26th and people will count down the night before as well. Businesses close for the typical day of and day before, but people celebrate the New Year or Spring Festival, for the whole week. People, this means I get to celebrate from November 27 to the end of January and that’s not even counting Halloween.

Celebrating with family and friends is important in Hong Kong but shopping bags and gift receipts are the primary hallmarks of the Holiday season in Hong Kong. Hong Kong gift giving borrows Hanukkah’s pattern instead of Christmas’ one day, even though in Hong Kong, Christmas is the primary religiously ceremony – there are smaller Muslim and Jewish populations. This comes as a relief to me because like most Gentile kids, when I learned Jewish kids got gifts throughout Hanukkah, I was tempted to convert. Praise God, Hong Kong has solved my crisis of faith. Here I get gifts for three months.

Hong Kong is a great place to celebrate the holiday of your choice with gifts and gatherings, but it can be tough if your move here involves leaving those most dear. Its times like these that Skype, cheap calling cards and easy access to the email make a difference in connecting to the folks back home. The other thing that helps make holidays in a new land comfortable is finding like-minded souls to commiserate/celebrate with. If you’re homesick, odds are, you’re not the only one. Western-themed restaurants offer "traditional" meals and parties for those willing to medicate their loneliness with their wallets and expat websites create avenues for impromptu gatherings and informal celebrations. And remember, if gifts, extra days off and cheerful crowds still can’t cure your holiday humbugs, you can always use an outbreak of H5N1 or SARS to con a plane ticket out of a worried relative.

New foods in a new land

Today is Thanksgiving day and in the states we typically identify this day by the traditional foods eaten on it. This thanksgiving I will commemorate some not so traditional foods I have come to like while in HK.

First on my list is a British staple, the digestive. Now some in the US may relegate these tasty snack to the cookie category but this is simply not true. Digestives are baked, sweetened, wheat crackers and I love them. I routinely go through two packs of them in a week.

And don't think me a colonial; I have taken to another very typical Hong Kong food as well. The name translated into English means "little chicken eggs" but that only describes it shape. These are made in a round pan that resembles a waffle iron except that the cavities are oval not square. The vanilla piqued batter takes only 30 seconds or so to rise into two dozen bite-sized mouthfuls of happy. The best part is that this snack is available throughout Hong Kong for about 1 dollar US.

Next on my list of favorite foods is Vitasoy's sweetened lemon tea. I seriously think the company is kept afloat by this one product. If I didn't love it so much, I would encourage their management to try to direct customers into other products in their line because this must account for a good 40 percent of revenue. This one is a simple as it sounds: Ceylon tea with lemon and sugar.

Back on the western side, I have come to have a profound appreciation for milkshakes in the last month or so. I guess I was not surprised to find myself craving something western a few weeks in. I was definitely surprised to crave McDonalds-style milkshakes. Strawberry, to be specific. What am I pregnant? (N.B. That was not a veiled revelation.)

Everybody here says this town is filled with foodies and so it stands to reason that I would discover some new food loves while here. Tonight, however, I hope for exactly the opposite. Heleina and I let Thanksgiving sneak up on us and so we have no idea what to do to celebrate and so we chose the Christmas Story option - a Chinese restaurant offering a traditional American meal. I'll let you know how it turns out.