Growing up in a Kampong(village) christmas ws a simple affair. If dad is home he would cut a branch of the casurina tree from one of those trees in the beach. Decorations were all home made. Mom cuts crepe paper in to long strips and we stick few together to make a long rope and roll it around the tree. Baubles too were home made. All through the summer months, we will be collecting sweet wrappers.Those shiny metallic ones. We wrap the cassurina seeds with the sweet wrappers. They were tiny, so we have to wrap a lot of them. It ws fun. If we are lucky, my parents would but ballons and we decorate the house as well.
There were never christmas gifts. I never got a christmas gift as a child. We were told tht Santa only delivers gifts to matsalleh kids(whites). besides, even if Santa came to Malaysia, there were not much chances tht we would get a gift, for there were no other kids in the whole country of 16 million(then) naughtier than us.
Still christmas holidays were full of fun. There were lots of nice food in all my friends houses. Lots of fruit cakes and cookies. Plus the joy of carol singing.

We hv a christmas tree this year. Kids made the decorations. They hv made some gifts for me at school and it is already under the tree. We went out for shopping yesterday. I wanted them to hv a new dress for christmas. 3 tops, 2 shoes and belt cost me 100CAD.(now i can understand why i never got any christmas gifts!!!!)
We still hvn’t done the christmas gifts part.(i can’t shop with the kids and then tell them tht Santa got it for them on christmas morning, can I?)
Somehow, even without the christmas gifts, i still think I hd a better time as a kid during christmas than my kids now. There ws a magic then, and much as I try to bring it back, it isn’t coming. Why is tht we hv so much technology and i just can’t recreate the magic of my childhood?