Vivo City. December 2011
[from FB posts: December 2011]
Something to think about...I was in the UAE for a week. I was told me that there are 10 million Emiratis and 20 million foreign workers. They have shopping malls on unimaginable scale there... mostly frequented by Western tourists. And... hardly ANY sign of Christmas at all. I mean... no music, no overt decorations... only little hints here and there. Well...OK...it's a Muslim country after all.
HOWEVER... now here I am in Jakarta, with nearly as big shopping malls, in the largest Muslim country on earth and the shopping mall is filled with Indonesians (not tourists) and all I hear is Christmas Muzak and there are decorations galore. I could be in any mall in the USA... very very odd contrast of two "Muslim" countries.
Comment Reply: @BD it's not just Christmas...it's everything. It's getting harder and harder not to go anywhere and feel like you are in a line at Walmart back home or something. The exotic from travel is disappearing.
December 2011. My last "normal" Christmas for a long time, I was hanging out with MPR on his day off at Vivo City Shopping Mall. Singapore not only does Christmas, it excels at it. The light up on the main shopping street, Orchard Road, is a riot of lights and colors. Every year, the city tries to outdo the previous year (not always successfully). Additionally, all of the major shopping centers and other shopping streets are wildly illuminated for Christmas. Singapore handles its multi-religious and multi-ethnic population well - just celebrate and decorate for everyone's holidays with reckless abandon. Christmas, Diwali, Eid al-Fitr - they are all excuses to decorate the island and be happy. MPR is a devout Tamil Hindu, but he loves seeing all the decorations for Christmas. On the Vivo City visit, he was busy taking lots of photos for the family back home. Everyone should see Christmas in Singapore!
As noted above, I had just arrived from Dubai which, at the time, was completely Christmas-free. In fact, the malls were "policed" and forced to take down anything that was overtly "too Christmassy". One exception, the Wafi City Mall (rumored to be owned by a Christian) was permitted to have ONE tree and Santa Claus. I remember MWK from Peshawar, Pakistan was so excited to see his first Christmas tree and Santa live. For me, it was a harbinger of things to come in life. Little did I know that in two year's time I would be in Saudi Arabia, "the land that Christmas forgot". No Christmas in Dubai didn't bother me, but "outlawing" it seemed excessive and a little petty.
On that visit to Singapore, I also visited Jakarta after a long absence. I noted the obvious Christmas presence in the shopping malls as a counter-point to lack of it in Dubai. Granted, Indonesia has a sizeable Christian minority, but it is still the largest Muslim country on earth. The Indonesian government saw no conflict decorating for Christmas and my recollections of life there in the 1990's were no different. Indonesians mostly do not celebrate Christmas, but they don't mind the commercial trappings surrounding it. So what was Dubai's problem then?
Whatever it was, it didn't last long. As Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed wanted the world (especially the West) to see his emirate as a bastion of tolerance, suddenly Christmas became "ok". In a snap, Dubai Mall was awash in Christmas decorations. The the heaviest Christmas ornament in the world actually hung in one of that mall's atriums. On my last visit, MWK and I were spoiled for choice of viewing Christmas decorations and eating traditional Christmas food. ECI, an ex-colleague from King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia, recently messaged me that she and her husband were attending a Christmas carol concert at the new Dubai Opera House. This all changed over the course of just 5-6 years! The question remains, a display of tolerance or worship of Mammon? The jury may still be out on that.
"Heaviest Ornaments", Dubai Mall, December 2018
As for "Christmasization", I am also undecided. Do I really want to find Christmas decorations, food, and music "just like home" everywhere I go? It might actually be nice if people celebrated holidays differently everywhere. McDonalds, Starbucks, and American Christmas - they are inescapable, almost. We travel to see new things, right?
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”
― Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
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