光明節與聖誕節 Chanukah & Xmas

光明節與聖誕節
    Chanukah & Christmas

The above photos are not Christmas decorations. The left photo is taken in America and right photo in Hong Kong. It is called the Festival of Chanukah(光明節). It is a festival of Jewish religion, its an eight days holiday fixed according to the Hebrew Calendar, as for Gregorian Calendar(公元曆), it will be from late November to Late December. This year it lies near the Christmas, from December 11-19, so a lot of people misunderstood those decorations are for Christmas. When you ask people what are those decorations for, over 99.9%would said its for Christmas, so that when everyone think that it right, it is not bonded to be correct. Can you recognize the above right photo, it is taken at Chater Garden, the background is the main entrance of Cheung Kong Centre. The followings are some shots of Cheung Kong Centre in Christmas of 2009.

    Main entrance of Cheung Kong Centre

  Main entrance taken at the Legislative Council

Xmas tree outside the main entrance    

      Viewing the lobby form upper ground

     Looking outside from the lift lobby

As for the Statue Square(皇后像廣場), normally every year there would be some furnishing to become a small town. Various entity would held in that area. Last year, there was no special activity due to the financial tsunami, but in 2007, the activity can be seen in my blog then.

http://danielyue2007.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!6389FF20030AA0EE!1020.entry

This year, because of the East Asian Games were held on Dec 5 -13, the area was used to erect promotion landmarks, and after that it would be too short a time for
other entity to break down the old furnishing and to erect new ones. In western
countries, the lighting ceremony for Christmas can be as early as Nov 15; in Hong
Kongit’s a little bit later, but still no later than late November. So this year, there’s still the promotion of the Games instead of Christmas decoration in the Statue Square.

Christmas is the most important festival in the west, and normally people will go out for celebration, not only on that day, but will rush around a few days beforehand. So retail sales will bloom up and it’s an indicator of the economic climate. In America, people seldom go out on foot except in downtown area, for they usually go by automobile everywhere. But just one week ahead of the festival, people will go out on the street for all kinds of celebration. In Hong Kong, it’s the same. For secondary schools would normally have a winter holiday for two weeks, and the school will hold their celebration on the last school day which is about Dec 21 or 22. Thus traffic jam already has started on Dec 21. For college students, they would have 3 to 4 weeks winter holidays during this period, and in summer they would have 3 months. While for the lunar New Year, we only have 3 days of public holidays.

Hong Kongis believed to be the most densely populated city of the world, so she is famous for her crowdedness. Thus no matter in Lunar New Year or Christmas time, there are always a sea of faces (人山人海)in the fair. It is not easy to compare by just one or two photos, but at least you can see some scratches (一麟半抓)from the underneath photos.

Chicago–It takes all sorts to make a world 芝加哥的大千世界  

 Hong Kong—a sea of faces   人山人海的尖沙咀海港城

                                           

For further details, you can enter my following ablums :

Christmas in Hong Kong 2009

http://photo.renren.com/getalbum.do?id=345808084&owner=251588714

Christmas in Chicago 2009

http://photo.renren.com/getalbum.do?id=345584735&owner=251588714

 

 

Please scroll on the right hand side of this page, and you will see a column named “Categories”. Just click on the item “Outside Hong Kong” and you can see my related article concerning this topic.

 

This article also appears in my other blog of http://xiaonei.com/danielyue2009 and normally will be renewed on Saturday evening.