Christmas frenzy arrives earlier this year, with tinsel appearing in shop windows and trees shining in the shopping malls in mid-November - long before time ticks away towards December 25.

The carols echoing again and again in supermarkets remind you of being in a Western country.

But no, you are in China.

These shopping centres are eager to produce a Christmas atmosphere by launching promotion campaigns.

Christmas is not the only holiday that has been spoiled by commercialism. This happens to almost all the other holidays.

The seventh evening of the seventh month of the lunar calendar when Chinese legend says that the Herd-boy and the Weaving-girl are supposed to meet has been renamed as the Chinese version of Valentine's Day. Fresh flowers, especially roses, and gifts for loved ones find a ready market just like at Valentine's Day on February 14.

The clerks with Santa Claus' hat wear big smiles. Their fawning looks, however, distort their faces.

Christmas, a foreign occasion here, is not actually a holiday in the country as we are not free for vacation. Nevertheless, we are a people who have seemingly become ready to embrace all things new.

The frenzy of many young people, though non-Christian, about anything alien has offered the business people the grand opportunity.

The combination, however, has despoiled almost all holidays, including those we have been observing for hundreds of years.

In the New World, Halloween was once a golden opportunity to run amok - to wish for no treat so that the trick could be performed. In our uptown bars, it was transformed into a sweet costume party, an event without menace or meaning, a ruse to dress as something you are not.

Thanksgiving is a rare holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada. It celebrates a concept - not a person, not a group, not an event. It is wholly and entirely about gratitude .

While not serving turkey at the Thanksgiving dinner, we corrupt the holiday into a chance to associate with customers or friends. In this case, we should give thanks while sitting down to eat. The thanks does not go to anyone but the holiday which has nothing to do with this country.

November 11, which once marked nothing, has been made into a thing we call Singles Day. It celebrates singles, which means it celebrates something so hollow it is hard to say what or who is being celebrated. Hermits? Not really. Marriage phobics who refuse to say "I do?" Not that, either. A lifetime of celibacy? No, too restrictive. So it is just anyone who is outside the fortress besieged (Chinese scholar Qian Zhongshu's term for marriage). Maybe, that is it.

Though October 1 retains a vestigial meaning as our National Day, it is widely disrespected by sales promoters. The National Day holiday, along with two others (the Labour Day and Spring Festival), has been extended from one-to-three-day holiday to one week to give us more free time to spend money.

The celebration of the day when our country was founded in 1949 has been moving, little by little, away from its real meaning.

As for Labour Day on May 1, which heralds merely the summer, its original meaning is almost totally lost.

Worse still, some holidays cannot manage to hold on to a fading dignity.

The Memorial Day for Lei Feng on March 5 is consigned to oblivion. The greatness and unselfishness of the soldier, who was always ready to help others, are not quite known to the young. Lei died at 21, while at work, in an accident in 1961. He was hand-picked by late Chairman Mao Zedong as a role model for the whole nation. He was expected to help build a high minded and disciplined China.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, when we appreciate the full moon and moon cakes, has deteriorated into something insignificant, or worse still, as another wretched occasion for shopping.

This festival is also known as the Moon Cake Festival because a special kind of sweet cake prepared in the shape of the full moon and filled with sesame seeds, ground lotus seeds and duck eggs is served as a traditional mid-Autumn delicacy.

The full moon stands for a family reunion, and the holiday offers friends a chance to get together. The men of letters used to gather in their own gardens to write and recite poems on the moon, the beautiful ladies, nature and other inspirations.

The observation of the Mid-Autumn Festival carried out the tradition. The union of man's spirit with nature in order to achieve perfect harmony was the fundamental canon of Taoism, so much so that contemplation of nature was a way of life.

There is a saying in Chinese that marriages are made in heaven and prepared on the moon. The man who does the matchmaking is the old man of the moon (Yue Lao). This old man, it is said, keeps a record book with all the names of newborn babies. He is the one celestial person who knows everyone's future partners, and nobody can challenge the decisions written down in his book. He is one of the reasons that the moon is so important in Chinese mythology and especially at the time of the Moon Festival. People usually hike up high mountains or hills or in open spaces to view the moon in the hopes that he will grant their wishes.

The men of letters of today can no longer afford a garden. Still, we are so busy that we have no time to appreciate the full moon. The obsession with the full moon on the 15th day of the eighth month is gone because we have a bunch of material matters to worry about.

Still, the opportunity to make connections during the occasion has been overdone. Business people have a keen appreciation of this point and pack the cakes with diamonds, gold necklaces and even cash. The cakes are presented as gifts to curry favour with superiors and win over clients.

Goodbye, moon. Bon jour, extravagant cakes!

Only a few holidays remain more or less sacrosanct.

Double Ninth Festival - the ninth day of the ninth lunar month in the Chinese calendar - is observed without too much commercialism. This is a holiday designated for the grey-haired members of the country.

The reason for its being partially ignored is simple: The seniors always tighten their purse strings because they know that money does not grow on trees. But there is still a pool of people that money-hungry businesses can cater to. The young people, if they happen to be moneybags, can be motivated to buy expensive presents, such as the "health enhancing" products, to show respect for their parents and grandparents.

The one thing I cherish about our traditional holidays is that it remained commerce-free. But it seems that it is hard to keep our holidays free of commercialism.

Like it or not, the holiday season is in the air. Watch your purse and have fun.

(China Daily 12/10/2005 page4)