Monday, January 09, 2006 :: Chris
Please Make Christmas Stop
It's January the 8th but it seems in my local branch of the Au Bon Pain cafe, it's Christmas forever. The decorations may finally have gone, hung at the perfect height to whack my cranium every time I went to place my order, but Christmas's rotting, soulless corpse still moulders within this place in the form of the shop's background music. Before Christmas it was Norah Jones on infinite loop, which faded suitably wallpaper like into the background - but for the Christmas period it's been Christmas carols. Christmas carols sung in some vile jazz-lite jaunty style, full of fake emotion and over-expressiveness - "Santa shooby dibbity Claus is coming to shwaddy waddy townwwwwn shooby shooby do" - and pitched at just the right volume and tinniness of speaker to bore into my skull like a freshly unwrapped Black & Decker from under the tree. It's relentless - as soon as one stops and blessed silence descends, a rendition of Silent Night that is anything but starts up and sends me running for the cafe's garden. Better to deal with 35 degree heat and traffic noise than that.

Unsurprisingly, I hate Christmas. Or rather, I suffer it, because it's hard to avoid. Living in Thailand certainly helps dispel all chance of Chrismassy weather, which is a good start. But the Thais make up for it by festooning every public surface with festive baubles. I don't even care about the god awful Christmas decorations whose only saving grace is that they present an interesting fire hazard - but the music; please please please, for the love of God, stop the Christmas music. This idea that there has to be shrill tinny loud musak accompanying every activity - eating, walking, shopping - is the bane of my existence. And at Christmas, that reaches its pinnacle. It's why I can't stand Christmas either at home or here - besides all the usual reasons, it's the sodding music that finishes me off.

I often wonder how the staff cope with this in the background. They must blank it out, otherwise there would be a mass suicide behind the sandwich counter after the first three days of the festive season. And indeed, Christmas in Thailand is a weird affair because, while it provides a great excuse for a piss up and holiday along with New Year's Eve, it also represents the worst aspect of monoculture. It's a holiday wholly constructed and popularised to generate more money for big business. Disconnected from Buddhist culture as it is, there's not even a pretence of religiosity or significance to Christmas in Thailand - it's simply a time to buy stuff and consume more.

My girlfriend and I headed to Borneo for Christmas last year, expectant that a predominantly Muslim country wouldn't be indulging in such gaudy gluttony. The impeccably dressed staff of the elegant hotel we'd splashed out on greeted us wearing Santa hats. You just can't win.

More on Christmas in Thailand:
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A journal about living and travelling in Thailand by Chris Mitchell, a British travel writer based in Bangkok, Thailand.

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