Christmas is around the corner and our favourite belt of shopping temples is embracing itself for overzealous consumerist worshippers. Scraggly lights have been strewn about from street to street, on trees and creeping up display windows. Decorations so tacky to the point of being offensive plop themselves down at the most inconvenient of locations to further clog up the pavements.
And to make matters worse, there are the horrid buskers which attract wide-eyed idiots around them likes flies to rubbish who insist on snapping pictures which would probably end up forgotten in the bowels of their hard disk drive anyway.
“What’re you? The Grinch?” my friend Angie asked as I scooped up a mini peach danish onto my tray.
“No, I just think it’s so… fake.”
It was a wonderful Friday afternoon, one which I’d planned to sit on a grass patch somewhere in town and flip through magazines while catching up with Angie. Somewhere away from the bad Christmas carols sung by screeching children who think they’re so cute – you know which type I’m referring to.
Turns out, the moment we got off the escalator with our bakery goods, it started to rain. We went back in the shopping mall where the kids assaulted my poor eardrums with a chipmunk rendition of ‘Santa Clause is Coming to Town’.
I swear, my sushi lunch was on the verge of being regurgitated.
We got around to Marks & Spencer at Wheelock where I browsed for Christmas cards and got out a list of names to send to.
“You still send out Christmas cards?”
“Yeah. Tasteful ones by snail mail, not these bleeding with corniness” I said to her and slid a pack of cards back onto the shelf.
“I haven’t sent cards out for ages. I just click and send these days. Much easier. PLUS, you save the cost.”
That night, I sat on my beanbag with my laptop with the intention of browsing through some e-cards. I came across the most disdainful collection of tacky animations I’ve ever seen complete with faux snowflakes floating down the screen, scratchy tunes in midi format and Maybelline-Rosy-Cheeked Santas huffing down the chimney to do the Polka.
“Your message will appear here,” I could just imagine a dozen Santa’s little elves singing in a devastatingly cutesy chorus.
Quick, someone pass me the barf bag.
But when I got up to get my list of Christmas Card Names, I paused and for the first time since jotting it down, realised that the number of names reduces with each passing year.
And there it was. The secret reason to my unrelenting fortress of Christmas cynicism staring right up at me within my hands.
It seems almost tradition for me to slip into a mode of reflection as the year comes to an end. And naturally, since the holiday season fans out into the new year, poor little Santa becomes my personal symbol of cheer to burn at the stake with a vengeance, because looking back, each year ends too soon and almost never on a good note. Santa just happens to be there to be bludgeoned silly with his sack of presents.
My friendster and facebook account is filled with people I’ve lost touch with. And that night I looked through them with a palpable degree of sadness, clicking on people whom I either used to see everyday or have played important roles in my life. There were pictures we’ve taken holding the happiest and saddest memories; of birthdays, wild nights out in the clubs, new year countdowns and one, of me in front of a dead drunk outside Zouk. And I realised then, at midnight on a Friday, I was being visited by the Ghost of Relationships Past.
Perhaps this was responsible for turning my experience of the Yuletide cheer, into a Nation-wide jeer. Something inside me hates this feeling of loss and takes it out in the form of a disgruntled Peach Danish-chomping grump.
Friends do, mean a lot to me. But how do you know which ones will stick by you in the long journey and which ones are really just passer-bys?
And why do I insist on sending silly little Christmas cards as a symbol of friendship when the relationship means so much more? Am I guilty of replacing my presence with printed cardboard pieces and fanciful words?
“Christmas cards usually mean, Hey remember me? I’m still alive!” Angie said to me online, “So why bother spending and killing trees when you could drop them an email?”
“Look who’s The Grinch now.” I replied, “Besides, I really mean it you know.”
You never know how long people around you will last. So meanwhile, I’ve come to a decision: no more cards, but more time together. A phone call or coffee to catch up means so much more than a stupid card. The jig is up: Mr Martini-Sippping-Christmas-Cynic has an incredibly soft spot he conceals by bashing up senior citizen Santa. But hey, that still doesn’t mean chipmunk renditions of Christmas carols or tacky decorations won’t turn me severely bulimic. 
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