My Old Christmas Tree

Published by simon on December 21, 2006

December stands for a lot of things for many different people, year-end bonus, Christmas parties, a time for reflection, or even clearing of annual leave.

I somehow love year ends. I dunno, maybe it’s a carry over from the old schooling days, when December (and November) usually meant the long 6-week holidays, and of course Christmas. Being from a Christian family, I always looked forward to Yuletide, even if we didn’t really celebrate it in any big way. But from a young age I had already understood the significance of the event from a spiritually point of view. Forget about the snow and Santa and stuff from TV, being in Malaysia (very hot) made sure I understood clearly the distinction between TV land and reality.

But in happier times, I remember my family celebrated Christmas once together when I was 7 years old. I don’t remember much of it, but I have a photo to remind me of it. The three of us kids were standing around the Christmas tree at home on eve night, my brother, my sister and me. We were all holding our presents, and dressed in our nicest clothes, which really wasn’t all that nice. My sister was wearing a maxi skirt, something you don’t see anymore these days.

I remembered I got a toy truck as a present, my brother got ‘Scrabble’ and my sister got one of those old-fashioned plastic doll, the ones that closes it’s eyes when you put it lying down. A far cry from the Barbies you see everywhere these days. I don’t know what happened to my toy truck, but my brother’s Scrabble is still around, in almost pristine condition, although one ‘E’ and ‘H’ is missing.

Our tree was quite old, it was given to us by Auntie Rosemary when she bought a spanking new 6’ tree, she donated her 10-year old tree together with the toy reindeers and tinsel to us. The decaying tree is still probably around, now packed in a box somewhere in the old house.

I dunno, things started going downhill for my family in the preceding years after that.

These days, I have my own Christmas tree at home now, and my children love it. I try to make Christmas special for them, and for them, I try my very best to avoid the path that I was forced to tread in life.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

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