Christmas in China: jazz Santa, Smurfs and toy trains

Christmas has exploded in China in recent years, with marketeers using everything from saxophones to Smurfs to steam trains to get shoppers to open their wallets.

Anyone walking into a shopping mall is welcomed by an orgy of festive cheer: Shop windows are bedecked with plastic Christmas trees, garlands and baubles, while the strains of "Jingle Bells" fill the air.

Christmas is celebrated widely across Asia, particularly in commercial centers like Japan and Hong Kong, where it has become a major shopping holiday shorn of most religious trappings.

It has particularly gathered momentum in China since 2010, when then vice-president Xi Jinping - now the country's head of state - popped into Father Christmas' cabin during a visit to Finland.

"At shopping malls, Santa has become a promotional tool for pushing Christmas sales - and Chinese like to shop," said Sara Jane Ho, founder of a finishing school popular among Beijing's wealthy.

This year she has noted the proliferation of young Father Christmases, his traditional beard and rounded belly replaced by a saxophone.

"The saxophone is seen as a very Western thing, and Santa Claus is seen as a very Western thing, so it's almost natural they go together," said Ho.

Last year, a shopping mall in Shanxi province featured a giant Father Christmas, the edge of his jacket lifted as if caught by a gust of breeze in emulation of the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe.

This Christmas craze is mainly limited to young urbanites from the middle or upper classes.

"At my home in the country, people don't celebrate Christmas," said Guo Dengxiu, a migrant from eastern Anhui province. "By contrast, their children who have moved to the city celebrate it: On Dec 24, they meet with friends and go out to have fun."

But Chinese traditional holidays, such as Lunar New Year celebrations, remain more important occasions for families to get together, professor Benoit Vermander from Fudan University in Shanghai told AFP.

He said he sees China's love of Christmas as "a close mixture between attraction to 'globalized' Western customs and a fascination with religion, which is clearly shown by the popularity of Christianity in the big cities of the East".