Snow Joke...

There are two industries that must be doing a roaring trade at this time of the year. The first is whoever it is that makes that fake rubbery snow that shopkeepers spray onto their shop windows to make it look like it’s snowing. I’m pretty sure the makers of this stuff don’t sell any of it during the rest of the year then suddenly BOOM! It’s going faster than pieces of cake that have had heat applied to them! And all because people want to make Tropical Malaysia look like a Winter Wonderland.

The other highly lucrative business at this time of year is the cotton wool industry. Yes, cotton wool – just imagine, how many tons of cotton wool every year at this time are diverted from their true calling in the cosmetics and healthcare sectors to be used to make snowylooking window displays, tree decorations and fake beards?

And why is all this fake snow being produced? 'Cos it’s CHRISTMAS!!!

Now, I love Christmas and have many happy memories of it from my own childhood back home even though I’m no longer an official Christian. But try as I might, I cannot get my mind around Christmas in a tropical country. It just doesn’t compute. I have been programmed all my life to associate the Season of Goodwill with winter – big coats, woolly hats, snowy landscapes, snowmen, sleigh rides in the snow: snow, snow snow!! Definitely not tropical heat and monsoon rains...

So when I see all this faux snow and winter kitsch being created all over town, I can’t help feeling somewhat bemused by it all. It’s just another cultural juxtaposition that doesn’t really have the right to exist in this context.

There are so many examples of this kind of weird juxtaposition in this new, globalising Malaysia. Like transplanting Valentines Day to Malaysia every year. Very Asian Values. Or what about this: Muslim ladies wearing baseball caps over their tudungs and Western style blazers over their baju kurungs at formal meetings. I have seen this, honest! Or finally, the huge numbers of Malaysian women (and some men!) dying their hair orange (mistakenly called blonde!) to look Western, or something. And I thought they had got their independence from foreign rule in 1957!!

Moving focus a bit to another Asian country that has been polluted by Western influence, I remember reading some time ago about what happened when a department store in Japan decided to have its first ever Christmas window display. The result was a schizophrenic and highly offensive tableau that featured a Santa Claus crucified on a cross!! Talk about mixed messages!! I expect they did not repeat that cultural snafu the following year!

So, ladies and gentlemen, as an outsider looking in, I can’t help but feeling somewhat jaded when Western influence disguised as fashionable cultural practice becomes an established part of the local scene here in Malaysia. I have in fact coined a term for this phenomenon – ‘cultureference’, or cultural interference. It’s not that I’m against influences from other cultures – they are perfectly natural should be encouraged, when they bring positive outcomes.

But I have seen what Christmas has become in my own culture – a glorified excuse for spending money that you haven’t got on presents that people don’t need. Christmas in the UK has become an orgiastic, booze-fuelled homage to excess and frivolity where the true meaning of Christmas – good will and caring for others less fortunate than yourselves - has become blurred and illegible like a scribbled message on a wall after a rain storm.

I just hope and pray that this is not the future of Christmas here in Malaysia. I hope that Malaysia’s traditional values of family, religiosity and common sense will hold back this swelling tsunami of cultureference.

So, I would like to wish a Merry Christmas and a decidedly jolly New Year to all my Christian friends.