As Christmas is considered to be a "Western" holiday by most Chinese, there seems to be an assumption that any practices associated with Christmas must be Western in origin. I encountered this assumption a number of years ago when one of my students at the university in Beijing where I was teaching asked me why people gave one another apples for Christmas. To the best of my recollection, I replied that I didn't know, as I was unfamiliar with this custom. It was then explained to me (I don't recall clearly by whom--I think it was another student) that this tradition was based on a pun. In Chinese, Christmas Eve is referred to as Ping An Ye ("Peaceful Night") , which is the Chinese translation of the title of the well-known Christmas carol "Silent Night." The Chinese word for "apple" is pingguo, the first syllable of which sounds the same as the ping in Ping An Ye (though it is not the same word)--thus the connection between Christmas and apples (perhaps also the red color of many apples served to strengthen the association with Christmas, as red is, of course, one of the primary Christmas colors). Having had this custom explained to me, I must confess that I couldn't help wondering if the whole thing had been invented by some resourceful fruit sellers to increase their sales of apples! At least now I understood why some of my students had been giving me apples for Christmas, much to my puzzlement.
I still find it rather amusing that my student had assumed that giving gifts of apples for Christmas must be a widely-practiced Western Christmas custom when, in fact, as a Westerner, I had never heard of it before. Evidently, to this student's mind, if something is associated with Christmas, since Christmas is part of Western culture, it must be familiar to every Westerner. This clearly illustrates an ingrained cultural presumption of many Chinese.
In addition, this episode helps demonstrate how much Christmas has spread around the world--though often with local variations. There seems to be something about Christmas that makes it appealing to people in very different cultures--even when they do not fully appreciate its deeper meaning.
Image of apples from usappleblog.org