It's Finally Christmas

Dear Family,

Christmas is finally here. Last week, Mom/Grandma walked you through some of the customs here so I won't repeat that. Instead, I'm going to review what we've done these last three days.

The Chinese people love holidays (don't we all?) so we actually had half of Friday off (Winter Solstice), together with Monday (Christmas day) and Tuesday (today) which is a traditional British holiday called Boxing Day. Of course, neither Christmas nor Boxing Day are Chinese at all, but this was once a British colony and Christmas is a big deal, although still not as big as Chinese New Year which takes place in early February.

So, we will start with Saturday morning. Mom and I went for a walk in our neighborhood, Hung Hom, and discovered this great bakery that also sold a great hot chocolate. Here Mom is holding the hot chocolate to stay warm (it has been really cold the last week or so -- mid 40's in the morning, warming up to maybe the low 50's in the afternoon. The boat behind Mom is a concrete fake that houses a larger shopping center, most of which is underground.


When we got back to our apartment, a large cruise ship sailed by in the harbor.


Saturday night, we joined several other senior couples and took a bus out to West Kowloon to see the fireworks (celebrating Christmas of course) over the harbor. We all met together in the famous Peninsula Hotel, where all the rich and famous get together. This band was great!



Turns out that everyone in Hong Kong also wanted to go to West Kowloon to see the fireworks. I've never seen so many people jammed together in one place. It took us an hour or so to catch a bus and then walk to the viewing area next to the harbor. The fireworks display lasted 12 minutes after which we then spent another hour or so slowly filing out of the viewing area and headed back to catch the subway home. Here the fireworks have just started and everyone has their phones up to record the festivities.

Gotta love the photo bomber behind us. I didn't even see this until I was later reviewing the pictures.

And here are the fireworks. They were very cool!

Sunday morning we went to church. Here we have just returned -- this is the tree in our lobby. It is real and smells so great that we make sure that we walk by it every day  and Mom often drags her hands over the pine needles just so she can take the smell with her as she goes by.

Sunday night (Christmas Eve) we attended the missionary choir's concert in Kowloon Tong. They were so great that we had to send you all those video clips. It was a wonderful way to spend Christmas Eve, and brought back many memories from my first days in Hong Kong as a young missionary. Over fifty years ago, I got off the plane here in HK in mid December and followed my companion around Hong Kong while he sang in the Missionary Choir. This is a tradition that has been around for decades.


After the concert we returned home for dinner. We had steak and vegetables and finished that off with strawberries and whipped cream. It was all very cozy with our fire in the background.


Monday morning we took a short walk down to the Hung Hom ferry near our building. Here mom is enjoying the sunrise. No one was up yet.


This is what Mom was enjoying from her bench. 

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After opening presents and talking to some of you we wandered the streets of Central and Admiralty on the island where the main streets had all been closed and then inhabited by Philippine women (domestics/maids to the richer Chinese people) who by law got a holiday on Christmas. Here they are setting up camp using cardboard to create somewhat protected campsites for the day.

Finally -- this part of our Christmas. We loved opening our present from all of you. We have studied every one of our beautiful grandchildren posing in this picture several times and can't wait to put this on the wall in our office. You couldn't have given us a better gift -- we love you all so much. Thanks to all the grandkids for posing for us and thanks to all of their parents (our children) for making this happen.

Sing Daan Fai Loch (Merry Christmas) to all of you and may you have a wonderful New Year. We look forward to spending half of it with you.

Dad / Grandpa



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