In Search of Christmas Lost

For six plus years a 'proper' Christmas was denied me. I wallowed in the lushly green and buffalo ridden heartlands of Malaysia. It was a very Muslim place, with nary a mincepie to espy or sausage roll to feed this yule starved Englishman. It was nearly enough to send this Christmas lover all Christmas crackers.

Last year, in a small town in outer regions of Penang, I set about recreating my ideal Christmas. I was with my wife, oven roasted chickens and non-roasting Chinese relatives on a cookery morning in a kitchen which was as hot as any Turkish wrestler’s jock strap. I got pretty close to rediscovering Christmas there, what with sherry trifle, bisto/oxo gravy and Paxo stuffing to accompany my home cooked Christmas fare. But it was one hell of a lot of cooking for me and I lay exhausted, unable to entertain.

This year, a whole twelve exciting months later, Christmas was being spent in a Christian country - the Philippines. It was there that I had severely hoped to be swept off my feet by a welcome wave of yuletide bonhomie, welcoming wassailing and good ole Christmas cheer. But I wasn't.

Despite being a seriously Catholic country, the Philippines, at least that presented via Makati and Manila, felt less like Christmas than my new home - Muslim Malaysia. In the marvellously materialistic Makati Greenbelt mall, the Christmas trimmings were there, but the heart appeared to be absent.

Desperately in need of some familiar festive fare, I had dragged my poor Buddhist wife into Marks and Spencer, now rebranded as a cool M&S. We hastened to the food section for me to buy luxury mince pies, Christmas pudding, sausage rolls and perhaps mulled wine. I like to do things properly at Christmas. No half measures.

Oh calamity,  as an aged American comedian was wont to say. Nary a one was there. No mince pies, no sausage rolls and no figgy pudding either. We looked and looked, but no yule log was evident.  The only vague remnant of an English Christmas, in M&S, was a tin of Scottish shortbread. But what could I have expected in a country of cock-crow church mass (Misa de Gallo - 4am), roasted pork (lechon) instead of turkey and Christmas cheese. Yes, you read correctly - Christmas cheese, eg Edam, all nicely round and waxed red.

Our visit had, thus far, teetered between the sublime and the ridiculous. The ridiculous being the service and breakfasts of the BSA Tower hotel in Makati, where cold egg, cold sausage, toast with no butter and stewed coffee arrives some time, up to 45 minutes, late. The sublime was the caterpillar clad, rosette lipstick wearing Filipina models who mock flirted with me for photos during my book launch.

Perhaps the lack of Filipino Christmas enthusiasm came as an aftershock, a tremor visa vie post tragic tornado and post viscous gun attacks, leaving many dead, right there in Manila. Or, perhaps, it was my unrealistic expectations, and the fact that Christmas there is a family thing and we had no family other than those we took with us.

I was suffering the acutest attack of high humbug. It was never going to be Thomas’ A Child's Christmas in Wales, or a merry Dickensonian romp ending all smiles and sloshing Harvey’s Bristol Cream around the fireplace. Maybe Christmas, once you stop being a child, is like that. Maybe Christmas is forever a disappointment. But my naive English optimism imagined something much, much more from a land brimming with countless confirmed Christians.

Christmas Day emerged from out of a bottled margarita fueled haze. Orchid Gardens Suites, in Malate, Manila, had released their barman early for Christmas. There was no alcohol to be had there on Christmas Eve. Luckily our friends had bought a bottle of margarita, which we hastily consumed in the hotel lobby, in lieu of the Southern Comfort on the rocks I really wanted.

It was all getting quite out of hand, and a teansy weansy bit bizzare.

Christmas breakfast in our new hotel consisted of two types of cooked fish (one smoked), Chinese style salted egg, Tagalog (Filipino) Beef, an assortment of fruits (including banana), veggies and a waffle replete with a very smooth peanut butter and marmalade. Needless to say, it would not have been my usual Christmas breakfast, but it was leaning towards interesting.

I thanked whichever deity for the hotel lobby pseudo Christmas tree. It had baubles and tinsel. I also thank the caterpillar clad eyes, and roseate lips which uttered Merry Christmas sir, as a timely reminder that it was, in actual fact, a Merry Christmas. We sat, the two families and I, some time after 11am, Christmas morning, in Starbucks,  at the Harbour Square, Manila. My wife was sketching - it’s what artists do apparently. There was one stepson reading, the other playing a game on his mother's iphone. One friend was sending text messages, another rustling in her handbag. One of their sons was drawing on their ipad, another drawing on paper and the final son gaming, also on his hand phone. I sat writing, disconnected from our group, but also totally aware of my surroundings and the predominance of elder white men, escorting much, much younger, Filipina women. I idly wondered who was whose trophy.

The ‘real’ Manila had revealed itself in the jeepney crowded streets and the exhaust fume nightmare which had been Chinatown, Binondo, Manila. Binondo Church, also known as the Minor Basilica of St. Lorenzo Ruiz stood as a crumbling relic amidst the grotesquery of ‘modern’ architecture. Street living poor crowded urine soaked streets outside Mc Donald's and Starbucks. Thoroughfares were a cacophony of jeepney horns and belches of black smoke, as cycle rickshaw (trisikad) riders pounded pedals into the smoky morass which could have doubled for one of the outer regions of a Christian hell. Right there, right then Christmas seemed further away than ever.

Later, sitting on the remains of Fort Santiago wall, I watched a pernicious tugboat ease its way up the Pasig River, sending pink, grey and blue waves against the citadel, creating sleek water sculptures with its wake. The Filipino sun was setting on our last day (Christmas Day) in Manila. Firecrackers sent salvos across the river as green galleon islands of water hyacinths floated by. Christmas had sunk in the area in which a Muslim Raja (Sulaiman) had once reigned.

It was a lesson in expectations, mine had been high in that Catholic country, and they were dashed. Christmas, of course, was not out there but in here (he says pointing to his heart). I carried Christmas with me. It was revealed in the kindness of others - our travelling companions. It was revealed in their thoughtfulness, their kindness and their consideration for others. On Christmas Day, we passed survivors of the tornado Haiyan (seabird) living on steps not far from our hotel. There were several whole families living there, women, children, babies all dirt covered and trying to exist somewhere, anywhere. As we sat in KFC, we decided to do at least a some very small thing to relieve the burden of those step dwellers, if only for a day. Between our two families we bought eight packs of KFC ‘Streetwise Box’, each box containing six pieces of chicken, and took them to those brave souls, the survivors of tornado Haiyan. It was all we could do, but at least it was something and it revealed Christmas in the giving, not the expectation or the taking but right there, on those steps, in Manila, in the hearts of my Buddhist Chinese friends (and wife).

After note, I did approach the day manager of the Harrison Plaza Village Square branch of KFC, and told him what we were doing, but he said it was company policy not to be involved in such charitable undertakings - this was on Christmas Day, in a Catholic country, but that’s alright because it is company policy.