Tis the season...

It's another round of holidays around the corner and many are busy with preparations to celebrate the coming Deepavali and Hari Raya Aidilfitri. With the festivals coming up within a couple of days, the streets and malls are bustling with people shopping for new clothes, cookies, treats and home decos. I'm sure lots of people are now busy sprucing up their homes, in time for their "open house."

Amidst all the hustle and bustle of preparations, I somewhat feel that our ways of celebrating festivities have changed quite a bit over the years. I remember as a kid, Hari Raya meant going out in a big group of classmates and visiting our class teacher and some of our friends who lived in kampung nearby (Unfortunately, there's hardly any kampungs as per se in KL anymore). Raya also meant home made ketupat (real ketupat with the leaves and all, ok!), rendang and fresh lemang cooked in front of their yards. Deepavali meant zipping around the city with the same big gang (we kids always travelled in groups :-P) from bus to bus (we were champions in remembering all the bus numbes and routes), visiting friends and enjoying all the putu mayams, dosa and mutton curry we can stuff ourselves with. Christmas was about making cards and gifts for friends and admiring the dainty Christmas trees at their homes with all the decos and cotton balls (for snow mah!). Of course, Chinese New Year morning will always be welcomed with the familiar smell of gun powder and red paper confetti from all the fire cracker blasting competitions the night before. Oh, and there is the angpao collections which we happily anticipated from friends, neighbours and even strangers!

Coming back to present days, these celebrations seem to have taken several twists and turn. Mostly, these festivals have been commercialised to cater for consumer spending. They no longer carry the original essence of what the celebration is all about. Rather, it is a celebration of shopping and more shopping. Gone are the days where most people welcome guests openly into their homes for a meal during open house. With the current rising crime rate, nobody in their right mind would do that unless you are looking forward to an open house cum robbery session. Most people have resorted to invitations and rsvp's for their open houses. Meals and goodies are no longer (or very rarely) home made. There is always the convenience of top standard caterers who's able to whip up any dishes you fancy. All you have to do is just pay for it. Gone are the days of ketupat and lemang cooking on the front yard. These are replaced by commercial "nasi himpit" nicely packed and sold in the supermarket. Don't even think about trying to cook lemang on your condo balcony or terrace house "garden" unless you want to be issued a summon for open burning and fire hazard! And there's also the famous commercial "home-made" cookies from factories in Puchong or Johor Baru to cater for all the "must have" kuih muih's lining our coffee tables. Christmas trees are no longer scrawny plastic stumps with paper "needles." And, God forbid... those cotton balls!!! No way!!! These are replaced with imported "designer" trees with models that resembles different pine species. Now, you can decorate your American Pine with Bohemian Christmas themed decos from Metrojaya. Or perhaps you may fancy Sparkling Crystals on an Austrian Fir? The choices are endless, thanks to our increased spending power.

However, it's not all that bad and not all is lost. There's also lots of cultural exchange from the years of assimilation. Now angpow giving, which were quite exclusively a Chinese practice, is widely practiced among the other races as well. Perhaps the color of the packets may not be red, but nevertheless, the practice is the same. We also see rendang or curries as a regular dish in non-Malay open houses. We all exchange gifts during Christmas and some of my non-Christian friends also joined the bandwagon to purchase a Christmas tree just to join in the festivities and fun.

So, I guess there are pros and cons out of everything. Perhaps I may no longer get to enjoy home made ketupat or hear firecrackers blasting openly, but I can certainly still enjoy the retail therapy at the malls and "absorb" the festivities while I'm there. Like they say, if you can beat them, join them! See you at the malls!