At the age of 10-ish, I never knew much about Christmas other than it is a time where beautiful lights are lit to decorate the streets and shops, presents are given, and the delightful appearance of Santa Clause with his goody bag. In Grandma’s home, we never celebrated Christmas as none of us are Christians. So everything remained quiet and it’s just an ordinary day. Sometimes, instead of staying home, Mom would take me to JB since it’s the school holidays.

While in JB, the Christmas spirit is much felt as we roamed into Singapore and there were more hype going around. Even when not in Singapore, Mom and Aunty Winnie would find kids’ Christmas parties for Vicky and I to attend in JB itself. We’ve attended a few of them and the one I remember is the one in Holiday Inn hotel. There was a Santa and a bunch of us kids, all dressed in pretty frocks. Our parents sat far back and waited while we had games and food.

At the party, we received a gift each as well as some party masks, hats and props to make our time more lively and colourful. We played games and after that sat around Santa obediently as we sang Christmas Carols. There was also time allocated for each to sit on Santa’s lap for a photo.

As I got older, the Christmas parties faded away. Nothing much happened around Christmas anymore. It was just another holiday. Then during my teenage years, when we moved out of Grandma’s house, we started putting up a decorated Christmas tree every Christmas just to enjoy the glow of flickering lights. It wasn’t a big tree, just a 4-feet tall one. For the thrill of it, we would also buy presents and stack them under the tree.

That’s how Christmas was for us. Now, we don’t put up the tree anymore at Christmas time. The nice shiny ornaments and blinking lights would be too much attraction to my three cats.