On Telling My Chinese Husband What I Want For Christmas

A bunch of wrapped gifts under a Christmas tree. Image source.

This year I wasn't able to go back to the US for Christmas, so Hendrix (my husband) and I had to figure out how to do Christmas ourselves. I got out my little pathetic 2-foot-tall artificial Christmas tree that I bought on taobao for like 20 rmb (that's about $3), and my Nativity set that I brought from the US even though it's in this big bulky box. Like, there's a whole stable included with it. Really too big to be stuffing into one's luggage to take to the other side of the world (but I did it!). I bought wrapping paper and ribbons (on taobao again) and I told Hendrix we're going to wrap things for each other and put them under the tree. Even though we both already knew what we were getting from each other.

Additionally, my plan was that Hendrix and I would buy gifts on Amazon to send to my family in the US, and my family would tell me what gifts they want to get for Hendrix, and I buy them here and wrap them for him, and he gets the ones for me from my family and wraps them for me.

I told Hendrix all of this. I told him about how important it is for me to unwrap something on Christmas morning. Even though he already said he was buying a vacation for us as a Christmas gift, he should still get me something I can unwrap.

By December 20, I had already wrapped a few things for him and put them under the tree, but there were no gifts for me yet. And like, I don't want to complain too much, I knew that he had been busy with work so that's why he hadn't wrapped anything yet, I knew that he knew it was really important to me. But I was getting worried that there wouldn't be gifts for me on Christmas, and I told him that. Trying my best to tell him in a nice way that wouldn't stress him out.

Anyway, my husband is great and he totally got everything together the weekend before Christmas (December 23-24). He communicated with my family to find out what they wanted to buy for me, then he bought all the gifts, and wrapped them, and even did some fancy stuff with the ribbons. (And I did the same for him, except my ribbon techniques are less advanced.) And on Christmas morning, before we went to work, we skyped with my family and unwrapped all our stuff. So everything went well, even though obviously I was really homesick too.

The reason I'm writing about this is it's a story about marriage, cultural differences, and communicating clearly about what I want. Hendrix is Chinese and has lived in China his whole life. Before we started living together, he had never had a Christmas tree before. Before I brought him to the US to meet my family a few years ago, he had never received a Christmas gift before. There are so many Christmas traditions that are really really important to me, and Hendrix never knew about them before. So I had to communicate about what I wanted. I had to tell him clearly that I expected him to wrap gifts for me, to not let me know what they were, and put them under the Christmas tree. Preferably, wrapped gifts start appearing in early December and then accumulate until Christmas. And that he was responsible for writing a list of what he wanted so the rest of us would have ideas about what to get him. AND that if he gets something for one of my family members that's on their list, he has to communicate with the rest of the family members to make sure none of them already got them the exact same thing.

Like, basic stuff Americans would take for granted about how Christmas gift-giving works, but it's not part of Hendrix's culture, so I had to very explicitly tell him what he needed to do.

It kind of feels weird, saying "there aren't enough gifts for me" out loud. Sounds like I'm a kid in the beginning of a Christmas movie, who hasn't learned their lesson about how giving is better than receiving. And as an ex-evangelical, I am a little hesitant to say so clearly "I want this." Isn't that selfish and materialistic? I learned in church that I should just try to be content, not complain, not have desires.

And if I were still evangelical, I'd probably feel like I should never say the words "you need to get me Christmas presents" out loud to anyone under any circumstances. Probably I would resort to extreme hinting- "hey honey did you make a Christmas list yet? here is mine" and that sort of thing. To actually explicitly say what I want would be "selfish", right?

If that's the only lens you have for interpreting my desire for gifts, you would totally miss the fact that it actually isn't about "selfishness" at all. It's about family traditions and nostalgia and being homesick when I'm thousands of miles from my culture, in a country that doesn't *get* Christmas. I didn't ask for expensive stuff for Christmas- I wanted a hairbrush and a notebook and some things like that. It's not about the stuff. It's about the tradition of unwrapping presents on Christmas morning. That's important to me, and that matters.

Back when I was a "good Christian", I would have felt like it was wrong to have things that matter to me. I'm supposed to be "content in any and every situation." God is all I need, and if I feel unhappy about something I don't have, that means I'm "making it an idol." In this ideology, people aren't even able to understand their own desires, and therefore unable to communicate about them. What if I hadn't told Hendrix how important it was for me to unwrap gifts on Christmas morning, and then I ended up sad or mad at him? See, you avoid that problem by communicating clearly about your needs and desires. But that kind of communication isn't really possible when you're not allowed to have desires beyond "God is all I need."

Hendrix cares about me a lot, and even though he doesn't really understand why all these Christmas traditions are important, he knows they matter to me, so he plays along. And I try my best to do the same for him for Chinese traditions. That's what you do when you're married.

And really, every married couple has to go through this process of figuring out how to do their holiday traditions together (for whatever major holiday[s] they celebrate, doesn't have to be Christmas). For Hendrix and I, it's an extreme example, because it's so obvious that we're from different cultures and he doesn't have any Christmas traditions at all- but really every couple needs to communicate about this kind of thing, right? Even if they come from the same background, there will be slight differences in their families' traditions. Wouldn't it be a shock to discover you had married someone who- GASP!- opens all their gifts on Christmas Eve? You have to communicate about what's important to each of you, and figure out how to put all those important elements together to make your own set of holiday traditions.

Anyway, my point is, being married means I have to communicate about what I want. If I weren't willing to say the words "you should wrap Christmas presents for me" directly, then I'd be unhappy on Christmas, and Hendrix, who is really trying his best even though it's not part of his culture, would have no idea why.