Visitors to the Lan Su Chinese Garden this weekend got a special holiday treat: a visit from Asian Santa .

While Asian Santa sports the typical outfit – red suit, black boots, big beard, glasses – he celebrates a slightly different holiday: Dongzhi, the Chinese winter solstice.

Venus Sun, vice president of culture and community for the Lan Su Chinese Garden, said the garden is embracing both traditional Chinese holiday rituals and Western ones. Asian Santa is the representative of that cross-culture representation, she said, arriving not in a sleigh but an ox cart.

“We want to make sure that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, it doesn’t matter what kind of holiday tradition you have, there is a representation for all the young Asian Americans out there to come over to the garden and

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