Growing up, Christmas held little significance for me apart from the stifling heat in which I would wait for my parents to come home from work, whence I would complain about our lack of Christmas spirits. I was not really the modern day Tiny Tim, but my dramatic whinges about our tinsel-less existence would have made Mr. Dickens very proud.
Lest you picture a bleak Christmas with a young Polly dressed in rags and constant cries of “please sir, can I have some more?”, I should write that though I spent Christmas mornings alone in a Christmas tree-less flat, we always sat down to a scrumptious Christmas dinner in the evening. My parents fused the best worlds of Oriental cuisine and fresh Aussie seafood: Peking ducks with plum sauce, prawns and lobsters, mud crabs with shallots and ginger, cold smoked turkey and potato salads, etc. But despite having my stomach filled to such a capacity that would have brought eternal joy to Oliver Twist, I was a spoilt bratty girl who still “asked for more”.
Every year I would ask for a Christmas tree, and each time I was met with the same answer that our flat was too cluttered for a tree. I did not get over the disappointment until I was at least nineteen.
My bitterness was made worse by parents who insisted on including tree ornaments for my presents every bloody year. What they saw as an act of kindness -- to replace any feeling of loss on account of no trees -- was merely adding salt to the wound.
A few days ago, I realised that Pixie’s dad did the opposite to her. He bought her a lovely plastic pine tree, but denied her tree ornaments. If only we had discovered the polar scrooge-ness of parents earlier; we could have had one perfect tree together.
This Christmas, things are a little different. I finally got a tree to put up all those ornaments. My parents decided to make my last few months in Sydney memorable by giving me my long-wished for tree. It’s a plastic replica which we will, according to Mum, “use over and over again when the grandkids come over”.
Mir recently wrote that parents change their die-hard habits at the arrival of grandchildren. It seems my parents even change theirs for grandchildren of the phantom variety.
Shopping for the tree was quite a drama. Dad did not really care what we got, but Mum insisted on absolutely the best.
“I will not have your kids say to me: wai-pou (maternal grandmother), our Christmas tree is crap,” she said when I recommended a thin plastic one costing only thirty dollars.
In the end we settled on a plastic cashmere pine.
“Smell that! It even smells like a real one,” Mum said once I set up my long-awaited tree.
“No. I’m sure that’s the plastic you’re smelling,” I said.
“Just take a whiff. It’s pine-smelling plastic.”
“I don’t think it’s good for you to be sniffing plastic.” But I did it anyway.
And on this night before Christmas: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Lest you picture a bleak Christmas with a young Polly dressed in rags and constant cries of “please sir, can I have some more?”, I should write that though I spent Christmas mornings alone in a Christmas tree-less flat, we always sat down to a scrumptious Christmas dinner in the evening. My parents fused the best worlds of Oriental cuisine and fresh Aussie seafood: Peking ducks with plum sauce, prawns and lobsters, mud crabs with shallots and ginger, cold smoked turkey and potato salads, etc. But despite having my stomach filled to such a capacity that would have brought eternal joy to Oliver Twist, I was a spoilt bratty girl who still “asked for more”.
Every year I would ask for a Christmas tree, and each time I was met with the same answer that our flat was too cluttered for a tree. I did not get over the disappointment until I was at least nineteen.
My bitterness was made worse by parents who insisted on including tree ornaments for my presents every bloody year. What they saw as an act of kindness -- to replace any feeling of loss on account of no trees -- was merely adding salt to the wound.
A few days ago, I realised that Pixie’s dad did the opposite to her. He bought her a lovely plastic pine tree, but denied her tree ornaments. If only we had discovered the polar scrooge-ness of parents earlier; we could have had one perfect tree together.
This Christmas, things are a little different. I finally got a tree to put up all those ornaments. My parents decided to make my last few months in Sydney memorable by giving me my long-wished for tree. It’s a plastic replica which we will, according to Mum, “use over and over again when the grandkids come over”.
Mir recently wrote that parents change their die-hard habits at the arrival of grandchildren. It seems my parents even change theirs for grandchildren of the phantom variety.
Shopping for the tree was quite a drama. Dad did not really care what we got, but Mum insisted on absolutely the best.
“I will not have your kids say to me: wai-pou (maternal grandmother), our Christmas tree is crap,” she said when I recommended a thin plastic one costing only thirty dollars.
In the end we settled on a plastic cashmere pine.
“Smell that! It even smells like a real one,” Mum said once I set up my long-awaited tree.
“No. I’m sure that’s the plastic you’re smelling,” I said.
“Just take a whiff. It’s pine-smelling plastic.”
“I don’t think it’s good for you to be sniffing plastic.” But I did it anyway.
* * *
And on this night before Christmas: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
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