All I want for Christmas
IT IS HARD to live a contented life with few possessions and even fewer material desires, expecially if you're living in the city. There's always an excuse to go out to shop, eat out and just spend money, usually on things that give you no lasting pleasure.
The worst time of the year is the few weeks preceding December 25 where almost everyone celebrates Christmas, whether they are religious-minded or not. For the non-religious, to celebrate is to shop, eat and drink. For the religious Christians, it's also to shop, eat and drink and then go to church to listen to carols sung by sweet young things in white, translucent gowns that accentuate their soft curves. In heaven, angels also wear white, translucent gowns (not according to the bible, though), but since angels are male (according to the bible), what could be seen through the flimsy material would be appetising only to gays.
After Christmas, there will be hell to pay when you open the letter from your credit card company showing the huge amount of money you owe them. For some individuals though, the payback happens sooner when they drank too much and smashed their car onto a road divider, into another car or into a bus stand crowded with bystanders.
Why is it that angmoh festive customs like Christmas bring so many broken limbs and broken lives in their wake? Consider Chinese New Year, the Seventh Month Hungry Ghost and the Fifth Month Dragon Boat and Dumpling celebrations -- they bring raucous enjoyment but without the accompanying credit card debt and drunk-driving deaths. (In this aspect, the only recent tragedy was the drowning of five Singaporean paddlers when their boat capsized after a Dragon Boat race in Cambodia on Nov 22, 2007.)
Personally, I welcome all kinds of celebrations as long as they are public holidays when I can wake late, go for a long run in the park and have a leisurely latte. In Singapore, we have public holidays to celebrate all kinds of religious and cultural occasions -- starting with the angmoh New Year on Jan 1, usually followed by Chinese New Year (two days), Good Friday, May Day or Labour Day, Buddha's Brithday or Vesak, National Day, Hindu New Year, and Muslim Haj and New Year, and one or two more occasions which I can't recall offhand. Except for the shopping malls, Singapore is a dead place during public holidays as few people want to venture outdoors in the hot, humid, sweaty weather. Rain brings little relief because then the weather simply becomes wet, humid, sweaty.
There is a shopping frenzy in the days just before Christmas. People elbow each another to buy stuff to wrap as presents to be given to friends and relatives. After all the effort and elbowing, what the givers get is only a momentary triumph of self-righteous goodness when they hand the presents out. Invariably, the receivers will smile and laugh as they unwrap the packet knowing full well that what's inside is not what they really wanted. (What they wanted are, of course, $900 handphones and one-carat diamonds.)
In America, they have a sensible practice where the receivers sneak into the mall after Christmas to return the gifts and get cash back. Not so in Singapore where you are stuck with a pile of cheap stuff which you then carefully put aside promising yourself that next Christmas you will recycle them as your gifts, thus saving yourself a bundle.
Chinese New Year is also a time to give, but unlike Christmas, the gifts are hefty dollar bills inside ang-pows (i.e. "red packets"). Only married people hand out ang-pows, and only to unmarried relatives and to children of friends. Hardworking but unmarried individuals (kids and adults) who makes it a point to visit the homes of all relatives -- obnoxious or not -- during New Year can easily collect a small fortune.
Cash packets are also given to newly-weds and newly-dead. In the latter case, it is not called red packets but pek-kim or "white cash" (white being the colour of mourning) and it's handed to the elderly chap in charge of the funeral, to defray expenses. Celebrating your death these days can cost over $10,000, depending on the number of nights for the wake, the quality of the coffin to place your rotting corpse, the meals served to your relatives and friends, and the religious folks mumbling prayers, hymns and chanting. Priests, pastors and practitioners of the lamentable trades all charge a high fee, and they don't even guarantee you get a respectful reception in the afterworld.
Nobody objects to cash, so the next time Christmas comes around, we should give each other dollar bills or shopping vouchers. This way, you don't get into debt and your heart rejoices because merchants have no opportunity to distract and skin you.
Above: Tangs is a glitzy department store founded by an enterprising peddlar who made his fortune selling to missionaries and their converts over a half-century ago. His store displays religious messages as seen on the circular plaque (far right) with a bible verse about some god sending his son to the world to save people. But shoppers want to be saved only when their credit card payment falls due.
Below: Next to Tangs is Lucky Plaza mall, thronged mostly by Filipino maids and bargain-hunting tourists, and packed with dingy shops run by reformed hoodlums. Locals usually stay away.
-- All pictures by Francis Chin, Dec 2, 2007
