Although in Taiwan nobody knows advent and Christmas is not a public holiday, Christmas gets more important in Taiwanese public every year. There Christmas trees everywhere, one can hear Christmas music (sometimes even German Christmas songs) and there has never been so much Christmas decoration to buy in the supermarket than this year. But most of the people don’t know the reason for the season.
Beginning with Advent we decorated our house and made a bunch of Christmas cookies that we also gave to some friends. We had a lot of Christmas celebrations (at the Lutheran Seminary, in Amy’s and Anna’s preschool,…) and Amy had some performances with her kids choir and her preschool, even at an event with Taiwan’s vice president. During Advent we also invited some friends over to our home to celebrate Christmas with them. Next week we also have invited our former neighbors from Taipei to our house to celebrate Christmas together. We are already excited for them to come and hope that they can feel God’s love and the reason why we celebrate Christmas – because God came to earth to be close to us and that this is also true for today.