Christmas Greetings From China

Christmas_hong_kong_1Down yonder, Francis DS writes:

Hi Jimmy,

I just want to make known a wonderful display in one of the big shopping malls in secular/Buddhist Hong Kong. 

They have constructed a large lifesize Nativity scene, and another
scene showing Mary, Joseph and Jesus looking for a place to stay. And
on the ceilings, you have angels carrying a banner saying ‘Glory to God
in the highest and goodwill toward men’

In addition, performances are definitely Christian in content, especially those on the 24th and 25th.

If you look beyond the veneer, it’s still commercially driven, and
one feels the ‘true spirit of Christmas’ is also lost on them, but it’s
still good enough!

http://www.cityplaza.com.hk/homepage.html

Amazing that they could get the true spirit of Christmas more right in a place that is part of China (which is officially atheist and often persecutes Christians) than malls can over here.

All Your Gifts Are Belong To Us!

Aybabtu_1 Yesterday I posted an Engrish Christmas greeting from Japan.

Down yonder, our first three commenters riffed on this by quoting and adapting different aspects of the most famous Engrish of them all:

"All your base are belong to us."

In case you missed it when this was all the rage on the Internet, FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT.

Funny stuff!

I can’t help chuckling at the part where guys put the saying up around town and it gets misinterpreted as an alarming threat in a post-9/11 world.

In case you don’t know what Engrish is, FIND OUT THAT, TOO and VISIT THE MAIN ENGRISH SITE.

CHRISTMAS EVE SHOCKER: Santa Caught In Cloning Scandal

Santas

[SOURCE.]

NORTH POLE (DAILY PLANET) — A stunned world reacted as photographs taken at Santa’s North Pole workshop revealed unprecedented advances in cloning.

"Apparently Santa has been way ahead of the curve scientifically," said the late astronomer and science guru Carl Sagan. "He may have had the technology to make billions and billions of copies of himself for untold years–yet he never shared this technology with the world."

The Catholic Church reacted with great alarm to the shocking revelation. "This is simply unacceptable!" papal spokesman Joachim Navarro-Valls shouted in a fit of pique at a Vatican press conference. "We have given St. Nicholas a very long leash–so long that his connection to the true spirit of Christmas has become exceedingly tenuous. The Holy Father has shown extreme patience with him in the hope that he would return from the spirit of commercialism, but now he has gone too far!"

Navarro-Valls also stated that the Holy See would be conducting an apostolic visitation of Santa’s North Pole workshop to investigate the cloning scandal and determine what actions need to be taken.

"Cardinal Ratzinger will be heading the apostolic visitation," he stated. "As the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Cardinal has great expertise both in theology generally and with moral theology as well. His dicastery has already forcefully written against cloning, which represents a fundamental rupture of God’s design."

Stressing that cloning humans was fundamentally incompatible with the Christian faith, Navarro-Valls went on to hint that the full scope of the Santa cloning scandal may not have been revealed as yet.

"First, there is a question of just how long St. Nicholas has had this technology. He was born in the late second century in the province of Asia Minor, what is now Turkey, and was one of the fathers of the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, where the deity of Christ was dogmatically defined. How has he managed to survive all this time? Was it a special miracle of God? Or was it a ‘miracle’ of genetic engineering or even cloning? Is the Santa of today the same as the St. Nicholas of the Council of Nicaea? He hardly looks the same anymore. Perhaps he is suffering from ‘replicative fading’ due to repeated clonings of himself."

Navarro-Valls added that the cloning revelation sheds new light on many aspects of Santa’s secretive operations. "It explains, for example, how he can visit every household in the world to deliver presents in a single night. It also explains how Santa can appear in shopping malls to hear childrens’ gift requests. And it explains how there can be so many Santas on street corners bellringing for charity."

The papal spokesman also indicated that the apostolic visitation would review additional matters besides the cloning scandal with Santa at its center.

"There is the matter of the elves. Are they the product of Santa’s genetic manipulation? Has he created a Brave New World at the North Pole, with a whole class of slave laborers genetically-engineered to perform their specific task of toymaking? And where did Santa get flight-endowed reindeer? One of them even has a mutation that causes his nose to glow red!"

"All of this has gone on for far too long," Navarro-Valls stated. "It’s time for the Church to rein in this straying saint."