I Will Tell You About Christmas Now

Seemingly, Christmas has been a long time coming to Phnom Penh, and its citywide acceptance this year was celebrated with a hilarious Cambodia Daily story on that most important of Christmas events, the Christmas Sale. This of course is not so much intended to celebrate all that stuff we claim to be behind the holiday spirit—the Jesus, the manger, the wise men—but is in fact a celebration of everything that’s been translated into Khmer from across the ocean, and frankly what’s made it this far is: selling stuff.

In fact, the girls haven’t the faintest idea what Christmas is about; it seems to be mostly just about presents they think. And also parties. Christmas parties involve presents, the Christian schools throw them, people attend, and guess what? They get converted.

This is the thing about Christian schools, now and forever: they demand immediate conversion, which is great for the numbers, you know, but not so great for the actual belief part. When Vanna was brought in—she used to run an organization for Buddhist nuns—to consult on a family being torn apart when a son had converted to Christianity, she went out for a visit. What is your religion, she asked him. Christian, he said. What does it mean? She asked. I don’t know. What exactly do you believe? She asked. I don’t know. Why are you Christian? Because they give me presents.
So: Christianity is about presents. And from this angle, it seems a pretty great marketing ploy, a fantastic way to play up the charity angle and, you know, occasionally doing good things but more often then not really just cooking the books, volume of believers-wise.

Anyway the Cambodia Daily reporters approached various Khmers wearing santa hats and asked them exactly what they were doing, why they were wearing them on such a hot day? And they did not know. Some had a vague recollection that santa was involved, some knew there was some kind of connection to Jesus but that’s about it. “I have no idea why we have to wear them,” went one great explanation.