Merry Christmas
When I was young, the no.1 thing I looked forward to during Christmas had got to be presents. Of course, any normal kid with a normal childhood would and life back then was pretty normal. Though I was shorter fatter geekier and had yet to grow a single strand of white hair, I was already a sucker for gifts.
As with all other children, the gifts I looked forward to are the gifts that actually serve some form of purpose. Gifts like ghastly shirts, weird shaped paper weights, photo frames, stationary (oh yuck... especially those people who give you erasers and rulers as though you couldn't afford them yourself), books that a kid at that age wouldn't understand, and of course not getting a gift at all; these sporadic occurrences were shunned upon.
Yes, I was materialistic. But it was normal to be back then
Other than presents, I also looked forward to one other thing... putting up a Christmas tree.
I know for a fact that the first Christmas tree I ever had was a table top Christmas tree. It was probably less than a feet tall (slightly shorter than my full body length at that time) and was made out of the usual plastic leaves. As the tree was so tiny we couldn't really fit many ornaments or put on any Christmas lights so we (by saying "we" I mean my mother and I as my brother and father were not too fond of such "hassles") just put on a few small ornaments and some streamers with the oh-so-compulsory star on the top.
Even the star was tiny. I could fit the whole star in the palm of my hand and yet still have room to spare.
When it came to putting presents under the tree, we actually had to put it BESIDE the tree haha... or on the floor. It was that small.
Later we bought Christmas lights just to decorate the tree further. The lights were multicoloured and 100 lights were sufficient to illuminate the whole tree. It was weird... there wasn't any real theme to the tree, just a normal multicoloured tree with many weird ornaments.
The REAL christmas tree only came years later when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I can't remember the exact age as it was so long ago, but I can remember who bought it for me. One of my uncles who was working with a hotel had promised to buy me a Christmas tree (he later turned out to be the uncle whom I stayed with for 5 years throughout the duration of my secondary school). I had been to his house, then in Klang Lama and was really awed by the size of his Christmas tree. Okay, it was only a 5 footer and yet for me it was perfect (again, let me emphasise that I was a very small sized human being at that age)
So I asked him if he could get me one, and he promised. But much later he forgot that promise so I told my mom about it... haha... and he bought the tree for me anyway.
A 5 footer, quadruple stand Christmas tree (I think it was modeled after a Canadian Pine but I can't be too sure)
For the first year we used the old ornaments. Again, the tree looked funny, and the 100 lights we had so faithfully reused over the years didn't do the tree justice. Insufficient lighting made it look really bare. Furthermore the ornaments we had were small but back then I was not so complacent as I am now (yeah... I know, I'm working on it!) but at least we got to put presents under the tree for the first time.
The second year however my mom said that we needed change. A big tree comes with a larger responsibility to ensure that it was decorated justly. That was when my mom took me to buy our very own set of Christmas ornaments. We bought many bells, streamers, lights, baubles and all the various assortments of ornaments. We had a theme; everything Gold... even the lights.
One thing remained, however. We never got a new Christmas tree star. We reused the old star so the tree looked a bit weird because it was so large and the star on top of it was so small. Nevertheless even back then I was good at decorating stuff so the tree didn't look too shabby. In fact I liked it so much that I didn't mind the chore of taking the tree out, assembling it and then decorating it only to dissemble it after Christmas and ship everything back into the store for next year.
It was beautiful. I can still remember how the tree looked like in its snug corner in the living room. I used to switch off the lights in the living room and turn on the tree lights and it would dazzle in the dark... I would just sit on the couch and stare at the tree (and the presents under it, of course) for hours not minding the mosquitoes which came to feast on my boy boy skin... yea I still remember being bitten really badly by mozzies because I sat there in the dark and watched the tree
Ah... the bliss of childhood...
I don't know how many times the tree came out on display but I know that its life was short. As you all would know (if you don't... now you do) I moved out of my house in 1997 and never returned to this day due to family problems and with that the tree was left in the store. I think my father may have tossed it out into the garbage for all he cared, but it doesn't matter anymore.
I've never really set up Christmas trees like the one I set up in my old house.
Now I find myself fretting less about what I get for Christmas. I've not been getting many presents ever since I moved out anyway but a few relatives still do give me angpau and chocolates which I am truly grateful for. However I've lost that anticipation for Christmas like many grown-ups have, where Christmas just becomes another event in the calendar. For me, Christmas is slowly becoming a routine rather than something to be celebrated... and of course you can't help but notice how commercial it has become.
Even when I was in Singapore I could feel it. The streets lighted up to arouse the "festive spirit", children and desperate parents scouting every store in search of the Christmas presents that they'll need for the year, Christmas carols ringing aloud in all directions, the ho-ho-ho man in a red suit occasionally breaking the silent-night and jingle-bells...
We throw elaborate dinners (and I've just attended one, which was very nice but nevertheless elaborate) decked with turkey pork chicken lamb beef mutton; basically all the meat that we usually eat... pies, cakes, chocolates, soups, stews... all the rich food that poor people in Africa don't even know about or have ever seen... we fret about not getting the things we want for Christmas and build up a long list of "wants" for Mr. ho-ho-ho just as a reminder that we must get this this this and that... we spend hundreds giving the "ultimate" gift to our loved ones, set up our Christmas trees and brag about how great a job we've done.. hang stockings up so that hopefully Mr. ho-ho-ho would put something inside...
We go out with our loved ones and play fireworks illegally, or just sit under the night sky and do all sorts of funny stuff with each other's bodies (hey I'm not suggesting anything, your imagination is what you choose it to be haha)...
And yet at the end of the day we forget what the true meaning of Christmas is.
We don't even buy him a cake though we lavish ourselves with one during our own birthdays or the birthdays of our loved ones.
I wish I could still see the "magic" in Christmas, about trees and presents and the whole lot, but I guess I can only do so if I have a child-like mind. After all, it is our children who remind us about laughter and how important it is to feel happy in this world... not to mention being happy about small little things such as putting up Christmas trees and tearing open present wrappers...
Merry Christmas to all of you, and happy birthday Jesus.
As with all other children, the gifts I looked forward to are the gifts that actually serve some form of purpose. Gifts like ghastly shirts, weird shaped paper weights, photo frames, stationary (oh yuck... especially those people who give you erasers and rulers as though you couldn't afford them yourself), books that a kid at that age wouldn't understand, and of course not getting a gift at all; these sporadic occurrences were shunned upon.
Yes, I was materialistic. But it was normal to be back then
Other than presents, I also looked forward to one other thing... putting up a Christmas tree.
I know for a fact that the first Christmas tree I ever had was a table top Christmas tree. It was probably less than a feet tall (slightly shorter than my full body length at that time) and was made out of the usual plastic leaves. As the tree was so tiny we couldn't really fit many ornaments or put on any Christmas lights so we (by saying "we" I mean my mother and I as my brother and father were not too fond of such "hassles") just put on a few small ornaments and some streamers with the oh-so-compulsory star on the top.
Even the star was tiny. I could fit the whole star in the palm of my hand and yet still have room to spare.
When it came to putting presents under the tree, we actually had to put it BESIDE the tree haha... or on the floor. It was that small.
Later we bought Christmas lights just to decorate the tree further. The lights were multicoloured and 100 lights were sufficient to illuminate the whole tree. It was weird... there wasn't any real theme to the tree, just a normal multicoloured tree with many weird ornaments.
The REAL christmas tree only came years later when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I can't remember the exact age as it was so long ago, but I can remember who bought it for me. One of my uncles who was working with a hotel had promised to buy me a Christmas tree (he later turned out to be the uncle whom I stayed with for 5 years throughout the duration of my secondary school). I had been to his house, then in Klang Lama and was really awed by the size of his Christmas tree. Okay, it was only a 5 footer and yet for me it was perfect (again, let me emphasise that I was a very small sized human being at that age)
So I asked him if he could get me one, and he promised. But much later he forgot that promise so I told my mom about it... haha... and he bought the tree for me anyway.
A 5 footer, quadruple stand Christmas tree (I think it was modeled after a Canadian Pine but I can't be too sure)
For the first year we used the old ornaments. Again, the tree looked funny, and the 100 lights we had so faithfully reused over the years didn't do the tree justice. Insufficient lighting made it look really bare. Furthermore the ornaments we had were small but back then I was not so complacent as I am now (yeah... I know, I'm working on it!) but at least we got to put presents under the tree for the first time.
The second year however my mom said that we needed change. A big tree comes with a larger responsibility to ensure that it was decorated justly. That was when my mom took me to buy our very own set of Christmas ornaments. We bought many bells, streamers, lights, baubles and all the various assortments of ornaments. We had a theme; everything Gold... even the lights.
One thing remained, however. We never got a new Christmas tree star. We reused the old star so the tree looked a bit weird because it was so large and the star on top of it was so small. Nevertheless even back then I was good at decorating stuff so the tree didn't look too shabby. In fact I liked it so much that I didn't mind the chore of taking the tree out, assembling it and then decorating it only to dissemble it after Christmas and ship everything back into the store for next year.
It was beautiful. I can still remember how the tree looked like in its snug corner in the living room. I used to switch off the lights in the living room and turn on the tree lights and it would dazzle in the dark... I would just sit on the couch and stare at the tree (and the presents under it, of course) for hours not minding the mosquitoes which came to feast on my boy boy skin... yea I still remember being bitten really badly by mozzies because I sat there in the dark and watched the tree
Ah... the bliss of childhood...
I don't know how many times the tree came out on display but I know that its life was short. As you all would know (if you don't... now you do) I moved out of my house in 1997 and never returned to this day due to family problems and with that the tree was left in the store. I think my father may have tossed it out into the garbage for all he cared, but it doesn't matter anymore.
I've never really set up Christmas trees like the one I set up in my old house.
Now I find myself fretting less about what I get for Christmas. I've not been getting many presents ever since I moved out anyway but a few relatives still do give me angpau and chocolates which I am truly grateful for. However I've lost that anticipation for Christmas like many grown-ups have, where Christmas just becomes another event in the calendar. For me, Christmas is slowly becoming a routine rather than something to be celebrated... and of course you can't help but notice how commercial it has become.
Even when I was in Singapore I could feel it. The streets lighted up to arouse the "festive spirit", children and desperate parents scouting every store in search of the Christmas presents that they'll need for the year, Christmas carols ringing aloud in all directions, the ho-ho-ho man in a red suit occasionally breaking the silent-night and jingle-bells...
We throw elaborate dinners (and I've just attended one, which was very nice but nevertheless elaborate) decked with turkey pork chicken lamb beef mutton; basically all the meat that we usually eat... pies, cakes, chocolates, soups, stews... all the rich food that poor people in Africa don't even know about or have ever seen... we fret about not getting the things we want for Christmas and build up a long list of "wants" for Mr. ho-ho-ho just as a reminder that we must get this this this and that... we spend hundreds giving the "ultimate" gift to our loved ones, set up our Christmas trees and brag about how great a job we've done.. hang stockings up so that hopefully Mr. ho-ho-ho would put something inside...
We go out with our loved ones and play fireworks illegally, or just sit under the night sky and do all sorts of funny stuff with each other's bodies (hey I'm not suggesting anything, your imagination is what you choose it to be haha)...
And yet at the end of the day we forget what the true meaning of Christmas is.
We don't even buy him a cake though we lavish ourselves with one during our own birthdays or the birthdays of our loved ones.
I wish I could still see the "magic" in Christmas, about trees and presents and the whole lot, but I guess I can only do so if I have a child-like mind. After all, it is our children who remind us about laughter and how important it is to feel happy in this world... not to mention being happy about small little things such as putting up Christmas trees and tearing open present wrappers...
Merry Christmas to all of you, and happy birthday Jesus.
Fell from the sky at 2:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home