I have enjoyed Christmas so much this year. Usually, when I can’t afford to go home for Christmas (which has been almost every year since I left Britain), it’s a miserable time. Most Thai friends don’t celebrate Christmas that much and most expat friends fly home. The ones who are left in Bangkok tend to be fairly flaky because we are the ones who can’t organise ourselves enough to visit our families.
I’m not annoyed about it because I’m the same; we are the kind of people who are always looking for the most fun option when we are planning things to do and, should something really exciting come along at the last minute, you can bet friends who had confirmed Christmas day plans with you will now have some urgent thing that they have to attend instead.
Last year, I had that very situation. A group of us were planning to do a laid back Christmas gathering; eat noodles and sit by the river. Of course, on Christmas day nobody was contactable and I spent the day alone until the evening.
I was actually so bored during the day that I went to the gym. I remember shedding a few tears when I did my crunches, and not just because I hate crunches.
Christmas away from home makes me long for my Mum’s cooking, weekend afternoon gatherings at my sister’s house where we watched movies and drank tea; and going running in the fields with my Mum’s dogs. It makes me miss my chats with my brother, seeing familiar faces in the local pub and sitting by the fire for a fortnight because it’s too cold to move.
It’s the only time of year I get seriously homesick, and flaky friends and ruined Christmas plans do little to help.
Anyway, this festive season will be different. Not different in the fact that I forgot to save money to travel home, but different because I have a boyfriend who I am treating as though he’s a child (NOTE: I’m only doing this in regards to Christmas. In all other ways I treat him like a fully grown man, fear not).
He’s Thai Chinese and so is about as interested in Christmas as I am in Chinese New Year; he thinks it’s pretty and fun but doesn’t devote a whole month of his life to it, like I do (December 1 is the day I unleash Mariah Carey and Slade on everyone and start watching Elf on a loop).
But I don’t care that he is not that interested. Instead, I am pretending he is fascinated by my culture and am giving him a lesson in my family’s Christmas traditions, whether he wants to know or not.
I have been waking him up with carols, forcing him to eat advent calendar chocolates every day (I actually have to make him, because he doesn’t like chocolates) and I am making him have Christmas dinners and watch festive movies.
I’m documenting it all on Facebook; his first Christmas pie. His first Christmas dinner. His first time watching Home Alone. He is really unmoved by all of it. After Christmas dinner he said, “I feel so full and ill”.
I mean, that’s the whole point of Christmas dinner, but he didn’t appreciate it at all. He looked so sad eating it, he really did. I feel like an over-enthusiastic teacher trying to force my interests on a disinterested pupil. But I am still enjoying it. I get to sit and yabber on about how my family do Christmas and he pretends to listen. That is all I want, really. I’ll return the favour at Chinese New Year.
I hope you are all having a lovely festive period too. I am off to scoff pies, force my boyfriend to do the same and then, on Monday, I will turn 30. Ugh. I suspect next week’s column may be one about feeling old and going on a diet.
