Singapore: "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas..."

Bright coloured lights, Christmas muzak at the supermarket, hordes of holiday shoppers, Salvation Army volunteers jingling bells outside each shopping mall. Welcome to exotic Singapore.

























I'm not entirely sure that even Charles M. Schulz, whose visionary thesis on holiday consumerism (titled "A Charlie Brown Christmas") was prepared for the apocalyptic horror that is the Singapore Christmas shopping season. Schulz's vision of a hollow, spiritually-lacking society caught up in the trappings of materialism maintains a light-hearted satirical tone, due in large part to Snoopy's uncanny imitations of various animals (my favourite being the penguin).

Instead, Orchard Road in Singapore resembles more of what "A Charlie Brown Christmas" might have been had George Orwell written it.



































Thousands of lights line the streets from above, with candy canes and ribbons adorning each lamp post along Singapore's busiest shopping district. Fifteen-foot tall electric Christmas trees decorated with colourful ornaments and garnished with snow twirl endlessly to the rhythms of popular Christmas songs. Large animatronic children lacking whites in their eyes wave from atop a Christmas-themed archway high above the road, happily inviting commuters to enter the chaos and depravity that awaits within (not unlike Disneyland's "It's a Small World").

























Finally, and perhaps the most sacrilegious of them all, is the brightly-lit image of two angels heralding the arrival of the Christmas season, encouraging shoppers to come share the true meaning of Christmas at Shaw Centre.

























So what does Christmas mean to Singaporeans? By the looks of things, less than it does to North Americans in the sense that so few people, it seems, take the time to actually place any kind of significant value on the holiday, and are instead preoccupied with the very trappings and seasonal obligations that so frustrated Charlie Brown. In fact, I would go so far as to say that for a majority of Singaporeans, Christmas is inconsequential, and is simply a time of the year when coloured lights are put up downtown. What care do they have for a fat white man in a red suit, or God forbid I mention that Jewish kid in a manger. None, really. Nor can they afford it. Christmas in Singapore is, simply put, a luxury for the rich.






























That being said, there is a definite feeling of nostalgia that accompanies these grotesque and gaudy street decorations and the sound of familiar Christmas songs being played through loudspeakers along the streets of Singapore. There's something faintly reminiscent of the artificiality of old Rankin/Bass Christmas specials like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" that at once are an affront to the senses, while at the same time endearing. Laura shakes her head in disgust each time we pass by one of the many brightly-lit displays along Orchard Road, amazed at the number of people who stop to get their picture taken beside a fifteen-foot plastic Christmas tree (complete with advertisements for popular shows like "Desperate Housewives"). But I'll argue that there is still a sense of beauty in these aberrations, if only for the sheer absurdity of their existence