It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas

It's one day before Christmas and this is just how Christmassy it's going to get. The newspapers carry a few articles about Christmas everyday, they've put up 2 huge inflatable Santas in front of Chandana Bros. and CMR mall, St. Pauls have put up a huge clothsy star bearing greetings behind NTR garu and the destitute have taken to selling bobble hats for a living. Really, I wonder if they truly understand what Christmas is all about, poor things, for them its just some commercial holiday out of which they try to make a living. There's an old beggar near my mother's office that dresses in red with a green scarf and wears a red hat and has fluffy white hair and a beard, just like Santa Claus you know. Funny, isn't it? It breaks my heart to see someone who bears resemblance to one of the jolliest, popular icons should be so wretched.
Santa kinda scared me when I was little. Scared, as in that I would be shy and wouldn't know what to say to him when I finally met him. On Christmas Eve, I'd push my wishlist into a sock and wait with anticipation and next morning, lo, a present!! Of course, I had begun to doubt his existence when I found a Foodworld price tag still suspiciously stuck to my bag of chocolates and the wrapping paper which Santa had wrapped my gift with had appeared in a corner of my room a few days later. That's when the news was broken to me. I never made wishlists again. Why did we ever grow up? (Gosh, this is making me cry)
Christmas in FIITJEE would only be a printout of Santa Claus with MERRY CHRISTMAS typed below it and stuck to the notice board and of course, a holiday on 25th (they don't want to be considered non-secular, do they?) Christmas in school? Now you're talking! Enter December and the entire mood changes. Practise for carol-singing competitions, plays and dances would begin in November itself as our Christmas programme would be put up on any day between 7th to 10th (it fell on my birthday once) right before our half yearlys. In kindergarten, we would be given biscuits and lollipops to eat. The lollipops sucked. (hee hee get it?) I'd always exchanged it for more biscuits but it's still a memory. But when the canteen reopened after being shut for 9 years (as "Canteen Sister" was ill), we frequented there for our goodies. Stood in line to get to the place where they sold Melts, samosas, Joker cones (I like them, OK?) and the yellow Tutus chips (yup, good old Tutus!) The school would be decorated with tinsel wreaths and thermocol greetings. A diorama of the baby in the manger would be put up in front of the marble statue of St. Mary in the garden. The little kids would also make their own models and a competition would be held to see who's is the best. Carols from practice would pleasantly float up to our classroom. I learned a lot of carols that way. Growing up in the lap of Christianity, I know more stories from the Bible than the Bhagwad Gita. The grottoes of our patron saint and our foundress would also be decorated. There was so much more to it, I remember but I can't put them down. Christmas time was so much fun in school, you really ought o be there to experience it. It's nothing like the commercialised version of Christmas you see outside. It's disgusting the way these great malls deck themselves up and put on great sales and go all "So who's Santa are you being this year?" I'm not against giving but wouldn't it be nicer if it was given to someone who really needed it? Christmas, although Santa is associated with it, is primarily, Christ and his sacrificing nature, something which I will not forget thanks to the teaching of my alma mater. Coupled with its principles and a miniature and plastic, but nevertheless, pine tree, Christmas comes to St. Ann's...
Christmas also meant HOLIDAYS while in school, like a proper vacation (something unheard of in FIITJEE) and of course, Christmas specials on Cartoon Network!!! How I'd wait for an entire year just for that one week of T.V. viewing. All week long they would show Christmas episodes of regular cartoons like Johnny Bravo, Scooby Doo etc. The good ones would be saved for Christmas day like Christmas comes to Jimmy Creek, one of my favourites where a greedy boy named Jimmy Creek writes Santa a long letter of things he wanted but Santa mistakenly (or perhaps purposely) delivers them to a town name Jimmy Creek and manages to inculcate the spirit of giving in him, Christmas comes to Pacland and many more and of course!!!!!!! The Grinch who stole Christmas!!! (You're an evil one, Mr. Grinch!) Yeah those were the times.....I doubt if they even show Christmas specials of regular cartoons now. Christmas has become so much more Scrooge like (bah humbug!). I would be truly pleased to meet the ghost of Christmas past, maybe it can show me all my other school memories of Christmas. The ghost of Christmas present? Not really, unless it brings me a Christmas present (hee hee) and the ghost of Christmas future? Maybe it will show me putting up a real live Christmas tree, helping the poor as I always wanted to (poor Santa look-alike, bless his soul!) and I hope my posterity would see the true spirit of Christmas as I really have.

Joy to the world!!
Merry Christmas everybody!!!