Tianni on Shopping: The Family Tradition

Photos of the children at the Blue Sky Healing Home, and some of the youngest residents asleep in their cots

I was baptised as a Roman Catholic when I was about five. Then, whether and how to celebrate Christmas was a foregone conclusion.

After dinner on the evening of Christmas Eve, my family of four would dress in our best and troop out the door for midnight mass at our neighbourhood church. Standing in a sea of lighted candles under the night sky as the familiar strains of carols emanate from within the packed sanctuary, I would gawk at the teenage girls from church in their black sequinned dresses and twirled hair being chatted up by smitten boys and think how much I wanted to look like them when I grew up and how magical a night Christmas was.

Then at 17, I converted to Christianity. As part of an enthusiastically evangelical church, celebrating Christmas was again a no-brainer. But, in place of my as yet unfulfilled childhood dream of dressing up to the nines for candlelit masses at the stroke of midnight, Christmas became an passionately religious affair during which I’d drag unsuspecting non-believer friends to house ‘parties’ where I’ll movingly regale them with the story behind Christmas and beseech them to convert.

But somewhere between 23 to 28, my convictions became closer to what’s known as an agnostic atheist. And for the first time I started having to think about what meaning, if any, the festival really held for me stripped of its religious roots. Being an ethnic Chinese who has grown up in Asia, in a family that has always been fiercely nuclear, the tradition of Santa Claus or Turkeys or boisterous dinners with extended family was completely lost on me. Sure, there had been the annual shopping trips my parents had brought my brother and I to in order for us to pick out our own Christmas presents (no, Santa doesn’t climb down the chimney in our household). And I remember the Christmas Day brunches with balloons and streamers and clumsy dancing by some hotel’s too thin Santa Claus(es). And of course, possibly the most wonderful of all, the cartoon marathons (Smurfs!) running on TV all throughout Christmas day. But to a young rebellious adult eager to etch out her independence, including in the area of festivals, the tradition my parents had tried to create for our small family failed to pass muster as a cool Christmas custom I could adopt as my own.

So for a while in my early twenties, Christmas became nothing more than yet another excuse to spend more money in the malls and eat out at fancy restaurants. I’d have romantic dinners with my beau on Christmas Eve, and with the knowledge that I’m entitled to a full day of pampering on the special day, ask for a bag or/and pair of shoes I’ve been coveting as my Christmas gift. On the rare occasion, we’ll spend the night with friends on the town and drink ourselves silly. Then I grew older. Perhaps it was biological changes, or perhaps it was a growing sense of mortality, but increasingly I felt the need to spend Christmas together with my parents. For a few years before I left Singapore, I tried to clobber together a family tradition from the scrapheap of yesteryear, buying presents for my parents and insisting that we, sometimes including my already married brother, eat together as a family on Christmas Eve. But of course, I left Singapore, and that practice fell apart before it was even given the chance to take root.

Somehow, this year, three years after I became a mother, the thought of creating our very own Christmas tradition for our little family crossed my mind. My daughter was old enough to notice that Christmas trees were springing up in every mall and restaurant we went to, and even her Chinese preschool had gotten in on the festivities, decorating with tinsels and baubles and holding its own Christmas party a week before Christmas. Just as my parents had given me warm memories of Christmas in childhood to look back on, I was aware that we were responsible for the memories she’d have when she grew up.

We’ll have a home cooked dinner on Christmas Eve’s I thought, but what do we do on Christmas Day? I toyed with the idea of bringing her to a Christmas brunch at one of the many big hotels in the city having a Christmas special something or other. I still had fond memories of the ones I went to when I was young, and most of them also came with roving Santa Clauses, ‘live’ Christmas carolling and kiddy festive partying of some kind that would save me the work of trying to create some ‘festive air’ in our home.

But apparently in the spirit of things, the Christmas feasting all came with price tags so large, any nostalgic goodwill I was feeling over the season was quickly drained. I also wasn’t sure that the tradition I wanted for my child at Christmas was one that would further fuel the freewheeling consumer bandwagon that every retailer was so eager to cash in on this time of the year. Yes, telling myself that I had an excuse to spend without guilt at least one day every year could potentially feel oh-so-good. But another part of me really didn't want to be a sucker and buy into the clear exploitation by businesses that had absolutely nothing to do with whatever Christmas could stand for, religiously or not.

And then it struck me that our family Christmas tradition from this year on could be to consciously go against this tide of festive consumption. Instead, we would spend the occasion doing something for others. And as it happens, there are no shortage of such opportunities in China, where everywhere we turn, there will be glaring examples of lack and the unequally dispensed hand of providence. We called up an orphanage for children with medical needs that I’d read about and asked them what we could bring for them on Christmas Day. They were delighted.


A staff at the home unpacking some of the food and clothing items we brought, thanks to donations from friends

It is my hope that this will be the start of a family tradition my daughter will herself have fond memories of many years later.


Kaela on her first of hopefully many 'Christmas giving' visits (due to privacy concerns, we couldn't take pixs of the children)