Emerging from decades of civil war and years of isolation, largely Buddhist Cambodia is embracing Christmas, at least the baubles, fairy lights and red felt Santa outfits.
But this quintessentially Christian celebration filtered through the Cambodian prism seems to be all about the party, while Jesus, Joseph, Mary and the Star of Bethlehem have been left out in the cold.
"I don't care what kind of ceremony it is," said 16 year-old high school student Koam Chanrasmey.
PHOTO:EPA
"I just want to celebrate it because a lot of other youths will do the same thing and have fun. That's it," he said.
Santa hats abound on children and supermarket staff as well as bar girls draped over the pool tables in the late night watering holes dotting the city.
Plastic Evergreens, some frosted white and others with day-glow tassels sprouting from their branches, can be bought at the Pencil superstore, where a young woman croons "Happy Birthday to you" to a chirpy electronic beat on the store stereo.
Holiday-themed slogans are emblazoned across the capital of the former communist-bloc satellite where foreign influences have long been a staple gripe of politicians who blame everything from pornography to the miniskirt and Thai pop music for a perceived erosion of Cambodian culture.
Perhaps more understandably, foreign missionaries -- and by extension the holidays they celebrate -- have raised the ire of some for their attacks on Cambodia's Buddhist backbone.
Religion itself was abolished under the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge who saw it as one of the key evils, along with money and property rights, in their devastating drive for an agrarian utopia here in the late 1970s.
As many as 2 million people died during their 1975-1979 rule, and the country's Buddhist institutions are still working to recover from the Khmer Rouge's genocidal policies.
But educator Meng Ly says he sees no threat to Buddhism in the garish displays of western holiday cheer, saying Christmas was helping his students see a wider world instead.
"It's a good idea for students to see different points of view," Meng Ly, a principal at a private foreign-language school in Phnom Penh, said.
"The more you know the better you can communicate with others ... knowing other cultures makes people clever and more open," he added.
Hing Yan, the dean at Preah Sihanouk Raj Buddhist Institute, who has studied the impact of other religions on Cambodia's Buddhist culture, said the hysteria surrounding Christmas is nothing more than a youthful clamor for anything new.
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