It was a night full of jingles, joy and love where the entire community got together to celebrate peace and unity.

On Dec. 15th, like celebrations of all the other festivals, UWC Changshu China had the first ever Christmas Concert to celebrate the festival of love, joy and peace and welcome the arrival of New Year.

Choir Performance "Jingle all the way

Students and teachers from different countries put up a great show with choirs, solos, duets, orchestra performances, acapella and dances.

During the concert, students sang the Christmas Carol "Silent Night", which was first heard almost 200 years ago, on Dec. 24th in 1818 and was declared by UNESCO as the world intangible cultural heritage in 2011.  As a song of peace, today it is sung by approximately two billion people around the world in more than 300 languages and dialects. It was such an ideal song for UWC community.  10 students and a teacher sang the song in 11 different languages. It was so heart-warming and touching. Together, they expressed a heartfelt wish for unity among peoples of the world and respect for cultural diversity. 

Dance Performance

Sandeep from Pakistan gave a short talk. He was very insightful and shared his understanding of the true significance of celebrating different festivals. He started off on a very light note where the majority of the tone of the speech was satirical and kept humoristic to both convey an important message whilst entertaining the audience. Sandeep has experienced not only Hinduism (which is his religion) but being raised in an Islamic country and receiving education in a Catholic school led him to discover both Islam and Christianity. Although he shared his unique intercultural and interfaith experience, he also highlighted the problems and issues minorities in his country have to at times face in terms of acceptance and rights. However, Sandeep's main focus was to show how festivals and religions should be seen as ways to promote love and peace rather than hatred and exclusivity which sometimes jumps in. 

 At the end of his talk, while he gave insights on 'extremism' and how that hinders this message of peace and love, he also celebrated UWC community's tradition of organizing and offering support for a variety of festivals from all over the world, making these celebrations global and as one of the ways to spread the UWC Mission and its values further.

Sandeep encouraged everyone to contribute to world peace

The concert concluded with a sweet orchestra performance of "All I want for this Christmas is You" with Emma, biology teacher from Canada as the lead singer.  The song made everyone smile in joy and brought a great end to this joyous evening. Many said "It was a delightful evening that reminded them of home. We loved it!" 

Our Head of Arts Department, Christoph, who is from Germany, said after the concert " This is exactly what is so good about UWC: we celebrate Christmas, just as we celebrate festivals of other religions and cultures. The fact that we do this is what makes us unique! And we celebrate all these festivals together. By doing so we show understanding and respect for each other. We go beyond a specific religion that might be attached to some of these festivals and we actually do what most if not all of these religions want us to do: to live together in peace, respect and love!"

It was a night full of jingles, joy and love where the entire community got together to celebrate peace and unity.

It was a night full of jingles, joy and love where the entire community got together to celebrate peace and unity.

Written by: Sandeep Kumar, DP2, Media Group

Edited by: Yueh Qi Chuah, DP2, Media Group

Photo by: Alan Wang, Pre-DP, Media Group

Video by: Qing Zhao, Pre-DP, Media Group