Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Of thanksgiving, halloween, x'mas, CNY

This time of the year, I will remember my stay in the States. Thanksgiving will be in Oct. I cannot quite remember the month which Halloween falls in but it is around Sep/Oct and X'mas we all know that it is in Dec. In anyway, I am jotting down what that I can remember below.

The first thing that came to mind about Thanksgiving was Turkey. We knew it as the supermarkets would suddenly be overflowing with frozen turkeys. In terms of timing, it was quite close to the winter solstice where we would have daylight saving.

For Halloween, my boys loved the "trick or treat" and to dress up as monsters. My Singaporean friends who were Christians would send us a circular from their church clarifying that Halloween was a Celtic tradition and was not associated with Christianity. But it was fun to see my neighbours dressing up their houses with skeletons, spooky spikers, pumpkin head and the likes.

My landlord was a senior who told us that he had two children around the same age as me. My husband wished him Merry Christmas thinking that it should be the appropriate thing to do since we were in a foreign land. Guess what, he gave him a lecture. He told us that he was not a Christian. Only Christians have Merry X'mas. To tell a long story short, the lesson learnt is that we will not go wrong with "Happy Holidays!"

Chinese New Year was a forlorn season. If my memory did not fail me, it was not even a public holiday. On the eve of CNY, I will hook up the Internet camera to do video conferencing with my parents. Thereafter, we would join fellow Singaporeans at my hubby's university to have our own "reunion" dinner. With family and friends in Singapore, fellow Singaporeans became our de-facto next of kin.

All in all, I am glad to be back home especially to celebrate CNY.

Happy Holidays, people.

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