Christmas in Cambodia

Somewhat mixed symbols at the Riverside Cafe on Sisowath.


As you may have guessed, Cambodia is not a Christian country.

Christians have been in Cambodia since the introduction of Catholicism in 1660, with the first Protestant missionaries arriving around 1923. Although Buddhism remained overwhelmingly more popular, there were around 120,000 Roman Catholic Church members in Cambodia by 1953, and 2,000 Protestants were reported by 1963.

After the Khmer Rogue purge, there were very few Christians left, other then Europeans. There are few exact statistics as to how many Christians survived the bloodshed, but estimates to survivor numbers are in the low to mid hundreds. Christianity remained somewhat illegal until 1990. After the practice of the religion became de-facto legal again, missionaries and church representatives began to arrive in the country: today, Cambodia has around 20,000 Catholic church members, and around 2,000 evangelical churches functioning throughout the (small) nation. Mormonism has also made some inroads in Cambodia: there are now 15 congregations scattered throughout the country.

This is a long way of saying that there are not an enormous number of people in Cambodia who grok or know much about the religious underpinnings of Christmas. As I was raised in a godless family of heathens, I was also fairly unclear on this until I was at least 11 or so. Certainly religion played very little part in my family's celebration of the holiday: we were in it for the presents, the food, and being together.

Christmas, I think, is much more of an international entertainment/family togetherness excuse and much less of a religious holiday—though few would argue that Christmas is much of a religious holiday in the Western world these days, either. Religious sentiment pro-or-con hasn't stopped the Japanese and the Thais from appropriating Christmas as an excuse to party, give each other gifts, and eat a lot of holiday-themed food. I speculate that Cambodia will follow suit as it accumulates more cash to throw around.