Like I know because Malaysia is summer all year round anyway. The passing of the seasons for me is only apparent when I stare in front of my cubicle in the office at the decor a hundred yards ahead put up by enthusiastic colleagues. Early in the year red ang pow packets and rabbit paraphernalia fill the space up front. Later it turns green for Hari Raya. And changes into a frenzy of colours for Deepavali. This December a beautiful Christmas tree light up the space. In fact, there are like six trees in the next department and the office lobby looks like it's competing with the shopping malls for best decor. Reckon there's where my bonus went.
At home I don't feel much like celebrating though. It's been a trying year and I feel tempted to disappear somewhere until all the merry-making is over. No such luxury as the lamlets insist on the tree and presents. It's tradition they say.
When does a tradition become a tradition anyway? I never had Christmas in my house when I was growing up as my father wasn't a believer before. But it felt christmassy enough as every year, as was tradition, Christmas eve was spent at my Uncle Richard and Aunt Molly's house. Being Swiss, of course Christmas was important to their household.
When I got married, I decided this was what I wanted for my family, a Christmas tradition to remember the season. And it looks like it's worked. Even my best friend's kids say that: Mum, we're going Aunty Patsy's house right? It's tradition!, they tell May Ling.
But it feels a little lonely as as Mum and FIL aren't around for the first time. Usually, Mum, no matter how frail, would get up and hang a couple of ornaments. In the last couple of years, we basically put the tree within her reach so she didn't even have to get up. And there were days and nights when FIL would just sit on the sofa, quietly smiling to himself, as he admired the pretty tree. And he cherished every present, so much so that we had to force him to open them, as he was quite happy to hoard them in his cupboard, unopened.
And today, as the tree sits in its usual corner, its branches half falling off (we have to get a new tree next year for sure) and my other half insists on playing carols and Christmas songs, I'm slowly being swept up by the season, whether I want to or not. Last year apparently, lamlet no. 1 said I played this Christmas CD by a local singer Leonard in the car so often they all wanted to scream. Right up to March because that's how long I felt like dragging the Christmas spirit, unwilling to let go and begin the New Year proper. Part of it was probably to irritate the lamlets as well ...(can you hear the wicked witch's laughter?) But I don't remember this.
How can it be that it is so easy for me to forget something that I've done year after year? That I always put up the tree in the first week of December? Or that Christmas songs are played in my household from Dec 1? And that I would have prepared all my presents ... most of them anyway, except for a precious few. This year, I feel like I'm living in denial. The lamlets had to remind me, and I went, oh ya hor...
Lamlet no. 1 said that we have the weirdest Christmas dinners .. and for that very reason he loves them as we have a truly international fare. Western pasta, fish pie, roast chicken, some years beef rendang, sotong curry, some years popiah, nyonya fare like otak otak and asam pedas chicken.
And I wonder to myself. What do I impart to my lamlets about Christmas anyway? The tree? The presents? The dinners? The family get togethers? Not any of those count for anything without Christ's birth. And Christmas itself is meaningless without His death.
But if lamlet no.3 can tell me that he doesn't want to listen to songs about Santa Claus coming to town as he's just a made up figure and that Christmas is about Christ, then it's all good...
I don't know where the year has gone. These last almost 12 months have been one big blur. And as Christmas draws near, with change, I hope it spells hope.
And so, a blessed Christmas to all ... including Mum and FIL, and the many, many friends and loved ones that have gone to pave the way in the ever after ...
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