Do they know its Christmas?* - Band Aid 20

Tonight was pretty special for me - carolling outdoors in winter! :-)

Quite a big crowd came and carolled at Square 3

Instead of the usual acoustic guitars, we had the Salvation Army Brass Band to lead us!

Altho the best carolling i ever experienced was in 2004 (read about it here), this was pretty memorable. First - and only time - i carolled in winter! At one point of time, the carol sheet i was holding was shaking as my hands trembled in the cold!!! I was also carolling with a group of people from all over the world - from the States, from Africa, from China, from Japan, from Korea, from M'sia... (yes, Markus was there too)!

It was nice to sing out the familiar carols - altho some were in unfamiliar tunes (they sang "Angels from the realm of glory" to the tune of "Angels we have beard on high"!!!!). A group of girls from the Jesus is Alive Fellowship gave a short presentation of 2 songs in African which was really cool.

After the carolling, we adjourned to one of the rooms for refreshments - and i started chatting wif this girl from China. It was interesting, finding out how they celebrated X'mas in China. They don't! No decos, no public holidays. Yup, people go to work and students attend classes on the 25th December every year - unless you happen to work for an overseas company which closes on that day.

Kinda hard to imagine, rite? Even for us in M'sia, it has become so commercialised that everyone celebrates (read: enjoy themselves) X'mas. I guess i just have to imagine Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) in Colchester and i get the idea.

But many people out there do not know it's Christmas - and even if they know, they do not know the reason why we celebrate it!

I guess it's up to those who know to tell those who dun, rite?

I had the opportunity to challenge the girl - who is an atheist - to consider the existence of God. After 2 hours, she still maintained that it's not a worthwhile effort. I thank God for the opportunity anyways - and who knows?

*I was initially quite skeptical of this remake but after watching the video here, i enjoyed it - altho the starting sounded a little dodgy! For the younger generation, the original version was recorded by a group of British artists led by Bob Geldof in 1984 to raise money for the Ethiopians famine victims. This version is the 2nd remake and released in 2004.