Looking For The Christmas Spirit

Looking For The Christmas Spirit

 

This is by far the hardest Christmas for me.  It is my first Christmas without Dad. 

 

Every year, the extended family would gather at my home on Christmas Eve where I would fill it with a beautiful tree, buntings, lights, candles, and all manner of Christmas decoration that was extensive enough to start my own trim shop.  Conversations peppered with laughter would surround the dinner table laid out with a huge spread of roast Turkey, a baked ham, rosemary-roasted baby potatoes, brussel sprouts, parsnips and home-made cranberry sauce lovingly cooked by David and our housekeeper, Evelyn.

 

This year, I could not even bring myself to go tree-hunting with the family, like I usually would.  The decorations at the trim shops out there were more confusing than mesmerizing.  I could not step into the grocery store to shop for ingredients for our Christmas Eve dinner. I forgot to make time to take my Mum Christmas shopping like I did every year.   I just could not feel the Christmas spirit in me.

 

Managing The Grief

 

 

I know this was part of the grieving process but I did not think Christmas would ever be the same again.  Christmas was about family.  How was this season about family when an important member of my family had been cruelly plucked from my life?

 

I recognized that the grieving process did take time and it would never get easier.  At this time of the year, it actually got even worse.  However, I tried to be gentle to myself and gave myself permission to take some time out of the preparations for the Christmas Eve dinner.  I allowed David, Evelyn and Mom to take over the kitchen this Christmas Eve.  I still would not allow a tree in the house.  If Dad could not be here to gawk happily at my Christmas tree like he had done so every year, then, why have a tree right?

 

The Christmas Spirit Came Looking For Me

 

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I knew my emotions would be diving through a tsunami, threatening to drown me under my efforts to strike a balance between a turbulent wave of grief and my façade of focused determination as I threw myself into long work days.  However Christmas kept catching up with me.

 

Our company sponsored the Christmas Wonderland at Gardens by the Bay.  That meant I could not avoid the endless rounds of Christmas parties organized at the Spiegeltent, the countless selfies and wefies taken with the luminaire lights and festive displays plastered across social media and worst of all, I had to think of fun contests and campaigns to promote the Christmas Wonderland. As much as I thought that I had to do it all with emotional detachment, the truth was that, I rather enjoyed working with my team on the project. It made my heart swell with pride when I watched them working very hard on the sponsorship activation plans, yet genuinely enjoying every minute of it.  I did not realize this till I looked back at the photos we took of ourselves riding the carousel, and clowning about around the gardens as a team.  I really did enjoy these moments with them. 

 

Christmas was not very far from me after all.

 

I looked forward to weekends, when David was busy with his sports photography assignments.  This provided me with some “Me-time” to wallow in grief at some coffee shop somewhere where I could salve the pain with a huge slice of cake.  However, I would come across a pop-up store or a festive push-cart nearby selling a shiny bracelet, or a pretty trinket that immediately called out one of my staff’s name.  So that was how I did my Christmas shopping for the girls at work. 

 

Christmas was not very far from me after all.

 

In the midst of this depression, Joel embarked on his new life in the army.  The start of his 2-year stint at national service meant that I could only see him on certain weekends.  I thought that was a good opportunity to avoid the pesky questions from Joel about my state of mind and I really did not want to pull him down with my depression particularly when he was embracing army life with such enthusiasm.  However, as fate would have it, he came home most weekends, and accompanied me to Church every Sunday morning, where we would have breakfast at the Church canteen after mass.  The boy brought me sunshine  as he joked about his experiences with his platoon mates, the friends he made, the drills, the exercises and the food at the army camp. He admitted to me that through it all, the hardest thing for him was to balance his time between his army mates, his girlfriend and I.  I was grateful for time spent with him, and even more grateful for the light he had brought back to me when I was feeling down.

 

Christmas was not very far from me after all.

 

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to take Mum shopping finally as Joel had to get back to camp and David had to trawl across the grocery stores for ingredients he had not yet bought to prepare for the Christmas Eve dinner. Mum and I traipsed down the entire Orchard Road zipping in and out of malls, looking for colorful clothes that were worthy of the season, trying them on at fitting rooms fit for 2 people so that we could both laugh out loud  at each other when we happened to try on a dress or blouse that looked like we had just put on a tea cozy or a granny’s table cloth.  We ended our day by having dinner with my brother Jerome and my sister-in-law Ely.  As I glanced around the dinner table at the family, I truly felt blessed.  I was surrounded by the people who mattered most. I spent the day with the people I loved and who meant the world to me.

 

Christmas was not very far from me after all.

 

Late last night, I went to the refrigerator to get myself a drink when I saw that it was stocked from top to bottom with brussel sprouts, parnips, cranberries, carrots, fresh herbs,  jars of different kinds of sauces, marinades and tapenades, Prosecco, and wine.  The freezer had a large bird waiting to be the main attraction at Christmas Eve.  The kitchen counter top was like a merchandising display corner of a Crate and Barrel store. Carving knives, roasting trays, roasting racks, pie dishes were lined up neatly in a row.  I realized I had nothing to worry about because I spent weeks fretting about whether or not I should call in the caterers.  I had already pre-arranged plans at the gym with my personal trainer followed by a cup of tea with some friends down town on Christmas Eve.  I was planning to just show up at my own Christmas Eve dinner party.  I felt very proud that David and Evelyn had stepped up to take care of the Christmas Eve dinner.  I knew I could count on them to whip up the perfect Christmas Eve dinner.  Actually, there was nothing new to this.  Every year, they did it anyway.  I was always pretty useless in the kitchen. I was better at opening wine bottles and popping the champagne cork.  Each year, as they both prepared for the annual Christmas Eve dinner, I was like the “a spare foreskin at a Bar Mitzvah” as David would describe me.  So, I was really glad that I had a good reason to stay out of the kitchen and left them to be in charge of all that Christmas fare.

 

Christmas was not very far from me after all.

 

 

Celebrating Christmas With Dad Anyway

 

This morning, it suddenly dawned on me that the only reason Dad loved coming to my Christmas Eve dinner party every year, gawked at my pretty Christmas tree, and drank way too much red wine, was because he enjoyed being surrounded by family.  Family meant the world to Dad, the way it did to me.  This Christmas spirit, was not about presents, tree, turkey and champagne.  It was about family. 

 

I knew that if the family is with me, whether at my Christmas Eve dinner party, or at a scrumptious Laksa lunch cooked by Mum on the occasional Sunday or at the malls along Orchard Road, or at the Christmas Wonderland at Gardens By the Bay, my Dad would be with us.

 

The Christmas Spirit is the Spirit of the Family, an unbreakable bond, and a circle of love.

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

 

 

Our Perfect Christmas Tree

The Year-End Break

I had been on a writing break and was planning to be so till the New Year.  However, I was compelled to write this post after a stressful weekend of Christmas tree-hunting had led to my reassessment of why I took a break to focus on the family and plan for the  year-end festivities.  

Bah Humbug 

The impending year-end merry-making draws a myriad of reaction from my friends.  Most tell me that the year-end festivities would usually bring home the importance of family and the special memories they shared with loved ones during the ubiquitious Christmas dinner.  Some friends would tell me how disillusioned they were about the air of commercialism wafting through the malls at Christmas, with harried parents thronging Toys R’ Us in the hope of buying the latest Lego sets or yet another Princess Elsa doll.  I even have friends who would buy the first flight out of Singapore, just to avoid the rainy season and the annoying throngs of shoppers crowding the malls and jamming the train lines. 


My Magical Christmas Last Year

For me, the year-end festive season is always a celebration of family.  Last year, as Dad was hit with a devastating Stroke  just a week before Christmas, I learnt that the true magic of Christmas for me then was the power of prayers and the heartwarming love and support that surrounded my family and I at that very painful time.  It was magic indeed because in spite of the Doctor’s earlier suggestion that Dad might be spending 2 weeks at the hospital, he actually managed to recover in time to be discharged on Christmas eve.  I had the best Christmas Eve dinner then with Dad and the rest of the family surrounding him.  Amazingly, he even managed a glass of merlot, held in his very frail hand, which he had used to wash his pills down with. 

Reunion At Christmas Eve

This year,  I had been planning a big Christmas Eve dinner for the family.  My annual Christmas Eve dinner was always a gathering of  family members who would come together to enjoy the yuletide feast.  This year, it would be a reunion of sorts because my Aunt and Uncles who had been living overseas, in the US, Canada and Australia, are now back in Singapore to spend Christmas together as a family.  This was a big deal for us.  Moreover, this Christmas would mark one year of slow but steady recovery of my Dad from his Stroke.  He may still be frail but he is mentally still quite alert and looks like he would be enjoying yet another glass or two of merlot at my Christmas Eve dinner.  

A Perfect Christmas

I undertook to personally plan every detail of my Christmas Eve dinner.  Everything had to be perfect including the food, the home, the decoration, and the tree.  That became a problem.  The perfectionist in me was turning this Christmas Eve dinner into a major headache for David and Joel.  David wanted to roast the turkey and cook most of the dinner.  I did not allow this because David’s culinary skills, beyond baking bread and making tea, was not that reliable.  Joel volunteered to gather the Christmas playlist, but I refused to risk suicide attempts at our dinner party with Michael Buble crooning over the speakers.  

Then came the Christmas tree.  A beautiful noble fir was supposed to be the piece-de-resistance of my Christmas party.

The family spent the weekend criss-crossing the island just to look for a noble fir but the trees were sold out at every garden centre.  Not even a pine needle could be found throughout the island.  I went into near “melt-down” at the garden centre, revivable only with a cake and coffee over which David had a chat with me about my need to get a grip on my perfectionist mindset. He was right. Our Christmas Eve dinner need not be perfect. It was going to be wonderfully quirky, much like the Ash family. 


First and foremost, it was a dinner party that celebrated life and resilience. We had imperfect moments when Dad's health caused us immense worry or when Granny could not remember what she ate an hour ago.  However, Dad and Granny, in spite of their frailty, would not let recovery from stroke, or a touch of dementia stop them from celebrating family. They will be there to enjoy dinner with us and possibly more wine than they should. They might frown at  my roast turkey, parsnips, brussel sprouts and potatoes and would possibly prefer  a Chicken curry and stir fried noodles but I know they would be feeling so blessed just to be there, surrounded with family.  I know Dad and Granny would feel even more blessed because it would be their cheat day, like it would be for me, and we are all going to have cake!

Secondly, it was a dinner that celebrated a united nations of cultures and races amongst  family members who come from different countries like Scotland, America and China.  It is not a perfect family. However, this  eclectic mix of cultures and races, in our Singaporean home made for much livelier conversations.

Thirdly, it was a dinner party that celebrated new entrants into the family.  2 of my cousins got married recently so I have gained 2 rather handsome cousins-in-law.  Ok, they are still wet behind the ears and have not been inducted into the family rules that the Eldest cousin is the "quasi-matriarch-empress-dowager" of the family and needs to be placated regularly with cake. They will learn.

Finally, our tree is not perfect.  However, it really is a reflection of us – a quirky family, not too large, but not too small, weird in all sense of the word, but fun, easy-going and welcoming.  

So this is my tree, the Ash family's Christmas tree for 2014.  It is definitely us isn't it?

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Muay Thai and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.