The Winter Solstice and Christmas Eve Apples

This week is not only Christmas, but also the winter solstice and Christmas Eve. Of course, you say, if it's Christmas it's Christmas Eve as well. But I mention it because people don't seem to do much here for Christmas itself, but they give elaborately wrapped apples for Christmas Eve. Why? It's a pun on the word for Christmas Eve: 平安夜 Píng ān Yè. This literally means silent or peaceful night, but the word for apple is 苹果 píngguǒ, so they give people apples. A local teacher explained to me that this didn't used to be a tradition here, it's only started in the last two or three years. When I asked how it spread she said via television and the internet. It started in the big cities and now everyone else does it too.

Why are they so elaborately wrapped? My only explanation is that this is China and they like things like that. It's similar for lunar festivals where elaborately wrapped moon cakes are sold for many times the simple (and yummy) ones.

A wrapped apple.

A whole table of wrapped apples on the street in front of a fruit stand.

Apparently apples of all sorts are appropriate gifts: one student gave me this beautiful glass apple!

Earlier this week it was also the winter solstice. Usually it occurs to me sometime that it is the winter solstice and I think oh yay, the days will start getting longer again, and then I move on with my day as if it were any other. But my Chinese cofellows decided to celebrate the solstice, so I happily joined in. Apparently there are different traditions in the north and south of China for the winter solstice. In the north they eat dumplings and in the south they eat tangyuan (boiled balls of sweet gooey rice flour). So, since one of my cofellows is from the north and one is from the south, we ate both!