It's the plastic cut-out of Santa's chubby countenance that really gets in your face. Insanely blue eyes, Ferrari red lips and a beard that looks like the froth on a well-made cappuccino bombard you at every turn. Like Big Brother watching your every move, urging you to spend and be jolly, Mr. Claus is a version of modern graffiti in Beijing at Christmas.

He's not alone. Christmas trees (the preferred color being white), tinsel and golden bells have all come to the party during the festive season. If keeping up with the Joneses is the maxim for decoration purposes, then no business worth its salt is going to be left behind.

Life-sized plastic Santa statues that sing Yellow Rose of Texas shake hands and utter guttural ho-ho-hos line the streets; festive clones that entice passers-by to enter and loosen those purse strings. Hotel lobbies and shopping malls are an extravaganza of sense stimulation - no expense is spared in glitz, and choirs singing carols pump up the volume.

A scant two decades ago, most people in China didn't have the foggiest idea what Christmas was, or what it represented; in the minds of a few it was simply associated with sordid capitalist behavior. "So what's changed?" - you may ask yourself while placing the angel on the top of your tree.

Christmas is not celebrated as a religious holiday in China and the concept of honoring the birth of Jesus goes largely unknown nowadays. Instead, it is another Western cultural tradition that has been welcomed with open arms and the day is used to get together with family and friends, decorate the home, exchange Christmas cards designed with Chinese settings and cook up some special meals. Christmas Old Man might evenput in an appearance in some families to drop presents into muslin stockings. Christmas with Chinese characteristics.

Some Chinese Christians (who number more than 25 million) celebrate by illuminating their houses with paper lanterns and decorating their Christmas trees, known as "Trees of Light," with lanterns, flowers and chains all cut from paper.

But removing the blinkers, the fundamental reason for going through this much effort to decorate trees and raise spirits is for retail barons to encourage spending; as always, it's all about the money!

From early December, hotels of every description are out in the market place promoting their Christmas dinners, each trying to outdo their competitors, and leaving Beijingers with a variety of choice like no other city in Asia. But prices are not for the faint of heart, ranging between $100 to $250 at most hotels - 300 percent of what you'd usually pay for dinner. Prices for a VIP ticket at a five-star hotel in the city can set you back $500, which would include a night's stay, Christmas dinner and entertainment.

Christmas in China seems to start the whole chain of marketing and promotional events that stretches from late November to the end of Chinese New Year and Valentines' Day in mid-February. It's a time for anyone selling anything to milk the situation for all its worth and the public is seduced with bargains, sales and specials in all their creative guises.

When the waitress at a local eating-house comes to take your order, wearing a Christmas hat, it draws a smile. It sits uncomfortably on her head but she perseveres. At least she hadn't been asked to ride a reindeer over to the table. She even manages a cheerful "Merry Christmas" greeting. Everyone watching smiles, leaving a general warmth beneath the layers of tinsel and other decorations dripping from the overhead lights.

That got me thinking about how cultural celebrations all revolve around feeling good and getting together with loved ones. Ironically, the further we move from the source of the celebration the more eager we seem to celebrate it. So the celebration becomes the reason and not the source. It is an extension of modern behavior and has little to do with disrespect of tradition. Nowadays it's a case of having no idea of why a person is celebrating, but because everyone else is doing it, so you just join in. Celebration by design.

This trend, it seems, is even prevailing in many Western countries, where Christmas is now referred to as "The Holiday Season" to be more inclusive of all faiths and those who might want to participate, but would ordinarily be prevented from doing so because of cultural or religious ties.

From the heart of Beijing, the explosive commercialism that is Christmas has mushroomed countrywide and is labeled by some as a Chinese phenomenon. What probably began as a way of garnering business with foreign visitors has taken on a life of its own, been assimilated and become a Chinese version of a birth that took place in Bethlehem 2012 years ago.

Still, not everything has been lost. At least most people in Beijing can now sing along to Jingle Bells.