Confessions of a Christmas Cynic

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.

Me, myself and I. Oh my.

The corny strangle-worthy cliché goes, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” I like to think that I’m one of those clichéd, incorrigibly cornified people who would drop everything they do and rush to the side of a friend in emergencies.

And indeed, it’s what I’ve stuck to and done so far. It’s like my love for the people around me is indispensable. Go ahead, pop a coin (in the form of a text message or phone call with a tear or two) and a snicker bar of non-judgmental support, warmth and comfort will pop right out of my vending machine hole.

I think this compassion stems from my own youth in growing up and accepting myself for who I am. My recent reading frenzy of brain science and psychology produced research done by psychologists in Stanford University in which the parts of our brain which work when we are suffering, light up too when we witness another person suffering. It fuels our ability to empathize with others and is theorized to be a social binder.

It is, of course, a teeny weeny bit more complex than that but I’ll bore the nuts out of you if I went on and on about which parts of the brain, and neurons and blur blah blare.

As for me, I care so much about other people that I’m guilty of forgetting to care about myself. Coaxed a friend out of taking a leap out of the window? Been there. 16 years old. Received a friend in my arms as she runs out of the bar after a dramatic and tearful break up? Done that; Timbre, a few weeks back. Got into a weird relationship with someone because I pitied the person? Got a tshirt for that (and I wore that rag straight from the Louis Vuitton traveling emotional baggage for a few months I might add).

It seems like I’m brought up to be compassionate. My grandma used to say to me since young that in order to be treated the way I want to be, I first have to treat them that way. That would be true except that she didn’t belong to a generation of cosmopolitan sipping, bug-eyed shades wearing, caffeine addicted mirror-worshipers.

But still, until recently, I believed in the inherent good of all people.

Perhaps, it’s the bright city lights, the constant jostle to not have your face shoved in some auntie’s unshaven armpits in the train, paying exorbitant amounts for bad cuisine and the constant pressure to be productive that has chipped the goodness of us frazzled city folk.

So what happened with me that I’ve lost faith in the good of humanity?

I guess everyone comes upon some time of his life in which he re-thinks the relationships he’s built around him. Parents suddenly make glaring human errors. Friends blow you off in the last minute even though you’ve planned your day around the meet up – or worse still they mysteriously pull off disappearing acts worthy of a David Copperfield show when you need them most.

Or when you do meet up, they remain relatively uninterested in what you have to say and drone on and on about themselves – which is what happened to me over a cunt coffee and bullshit bagel session at a certain cafe which reaps a heap of the pink consumer dollar.

He called me up saying we had to catch up and I agreed since I haven’t seen him for months and I ended up fidgeting restlessly since he cuts in everything I say with things about himself.

I try my best not to dump my woes on people and when I do, they get only the tip of the iceberg. I figured that it was bad enough I’m paying shrinks to listen to my narcissistic self jabber on and on about my life without shamelessly imposing my life stories on my poor friends.

It was while on the way home, in the crowded train that I realised, it’s time I shifted the focus to myself. In fact, I remember lunch with Darryl on a Friday at the place which he says is for People-with-too-much-money-and-nothing-to-do-on-a-Sunday-afternoon when I told him my main priority right now was myself.

As selfish as it sounded, looking back, I’ve neglected the relationship I have with myself and invested too much on others, only to come away feeling disappointed. Perhaps that’s where the problem lies. The other strangle-worthy corny quote goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

I guess I’ll just have to be content with being as cynical as the rest of the population with their faces shoved up the sweaty, unshaven armpit of some random jade bangle-wearing auntie on the train. I shall save some of my snicker bars for myself and not give it all away. But of course, you’re still more than welcome to pop a coin in. But I’m saving some so that the next time I’m hit hard by some horrendous life event, I’ll make sure I pop a coin in and savour my snicker bar, myself.