Therapy?

"I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree

Christmas eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams."

If I had to pick one single, ever-constant memory of Christmas in my home of days past, would be the sounds of Pat Boone singing "I’ll Be Home For Christmas" in our family stereo on Christmas day morning. Nothing can erase that. We are not Christians, but we do commemorate Christmas in our own way. My family is a perfect marriage of Chinese traditionalism and modernity, or for lack of a better word "banana-ism". Dad went through a rigorous, strictly Chinese education, and would know more proverbs at the back of his hand than in my entire head. His first taste of travelling to a foreign country was when he went to Singapore in his 20s to study medicine.

Mom, however, was a get-goer.  Pursuing a nursing course in England, every year-end holiday she had she would tour Europe with her coursemates, and even now her vivid recounts of the wonderful times she had before she settled down continue to echo in my head. Austria and Switzerland… where her heart belonged I guess. And after she married dad she brought her love of Europe to the household… in so many little ways.

Without her we would never have heard of trifle, French toast, little drummer boys, those cute little Swiss clogs… And of course she brought with her her love for Christmas, of spending days past touring Europe with her friends. I like to think it’s her way of remembering her friends too. Every year approaching Christmas you could almost notice a healthy glow around my mom, and she would always be the one in charge of making plans for the rest of us.

If there was one thing that brought my dad and mom together was their love for oldies. Cliff Richard, Pat Boone, Elvis, Russ Hamilton, Nat King Cole, The Platters… I spent the better part of my childhood listening to them and growing to like them too… eventually. And we had a few very special Christmas albums which we would shake the dust off of every year-end and play them, back-to-back, nonstop. Pat Boone’s White Christmas would be at the very top of the list for whatever reason mom had, and that album received the most airplay. It would probably be disheartening for my parents to know that Pat Boone today is still very much alive but singing heavy metal… so it’s best to remember them at their prime, yes? Deserving special mention too, would be the Christmas albums of Elvis, The Carpenters and Johnny Mathis… stellar artists from an era ago, whose music would probably live for the better part of forever. But still, lingering on would still be Pat Boone, crooning away as he does best.

So what does Christmas mean for us other than a Pat Boone moment? Most celebrate Christmas to mark the birth of Jesus, while some opt for crass commercialism. For us it’s simpler. It’s a day that brings the family together. There wasn’t a Christmas we didn’t spend together, the 4 of us. Through the years, Christmas at Cameron Highlands, turkey with Pete’s, a day out in Penang, a lit Christmas tree displayed proudly in the living room. Fragments of memories remain but the quintessential warmth of thinking of them remains.

It’s a time for us to reflect on the year and how we should put family first, even more now that they’re gone. It’s a time to ring up old friends, old confidantes, old relatives, and send them some holiday cheer, wherever they may be. For my mom especially. And these few years, I commemorate Christmas to remember her, who brought the joy of Christmas to the family.

Merry Christmas, everyone.