BY AJ PAZ
DECEMBER 20, 2022 10:45 EST
In 2018, Su Lun, a media technology researcher, felt depressed while walking on the campus of Nanjing University on Christmas Eve. He didn't see any signs of Christmas celebrations or feel any holiday atmosphere. After that, he received a notice in a college student's WeChat group telling students not to post about Christmas on social media. Several universities and schools also banned students from celebrating or talking about Christmas, and governments in cities in Hebei, Guizhou, and Guangxi banned businesses from displaying Christmas decorations. The Chinese government also implemented new regulations on religion, leading to increased persecution of house churches.
According to Christianity Today, for over a decade, intellectuals in China have called for a boycott of Christmas, seeing it as a "foreign holiday." In 2006, scholars from several universities wrote a letter advocating withholding support against Christmas and the "Christianization" of Chinese people. They argued that it is self-abasing for a Chinese person to celebrate the birth of a man they do not worship and claimed that doing so shows a "lack of faith and deviation from our own culture." However, many others disagree, arguing that young Chinese people celebrate Christmas for fun and that their observances have nothing to do with religion. They see the boycott as "ridiculous" and believe it is unnecessary to defend traditional Chinese culture and traditional faiths by boycotting Christmas.
-
0 Comments