Season’s writings: Christmas short stories by Singapore writers
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The Straits Times has a tradition of commissioning home-grown authors to write short stories for Christmas. This year’s theme is C Is For Christmas, Not Covid. Here is wishing our readers happy holidays.
Christmas Spirit by Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips
ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO
Louise lives in a Christmas Museum – or so she likes to tell people. Every year end, boxes upon boxes are pulled out from the storeroom – a small hole in the wall filled to the brim with holiday decorations of all shapes, colours and forms. None of them match. Each box is a menagerie of ornaments bought at holiday markets or picked up on Christmases away from home or at Boxing Day clearance sales. Louise cared for each ornament equally.
Dusting out the table cloth covered in wreaths and berries, Louise took great pride in laying the dining table – the centrepiece of her new home. She then broke out the chair covers and changed the cases of the few couch cushions she had. This is just the start of it, she thought, eyeing her plain tree. It would have to wait for the weekend, when her nieces and nephews would dig through her ornament collection and decorate the tree in what she was sure would be an expression of love and joy.
For now, Louise sat at the head of the table, looking around at her museum. She counted three nativity scenes, four wreaths, six snow globes and eight Santa Clauses just in her view. Perhaps it was a bit much for her three-room flat, but Louise didn’t think much about it. Her enthusiasm would continue to grow the closer it was to Christmas Day. This year, she would be hosting Christmas dinner! She had to insist her family allow her to break in her new home for the holiday season, winning the argument with her closing line, “You have to start passing down traditions, Mum!”
Did you know? by Adeline Foo
ST ILLUSTRATION: CEL GULAPA
Watching from a corner of the Notre Dame complex, near the Old City of Jerusalem’s New Gate, a young girl, a new immigrant in the city, was curious about the solemnity of the procession.
She couldn’t read any of the announcements splashed across newspapers in bold letters. But she had heard people in the market chatter about something special being returned, something that had been taken more than 2,000 years ago from Bethlehem. What, she had no idea.
Day after day, she made her way to the square where huge throngs of people gathered to pay their respects to whatever it was that was housed inside the Notre Dame complex. She joined the queue only out of curiosity. But her luck would run out each time. People were dismissed as soon as the hour to get into the building timed out. “Come back tomorrow!” they would be rudely shooed away by the security guards.
One early morning, the girl decided to give it another shot. “Tamad! Get up!” she chided herself, when her body refused to roll out of bed. Her feet felt like lead, but she was determined to make it this time. When she looked up at the sky stepping out into the dark, she saw a tiny blinking star. It was faint, but steadily blinking, almost as if it was bidding her westward, towards the Notre Dame complex.
How a Covid Christmas party taught me the meaning of Christmas by Suffian Hakim
ST ILLUSTRATION: MIEL
I attended my first ever Christmas party when I was 15. It was at a classmate’s condo swimming pool. It was a crowded, boisterous affair. His dad, skinny, tanned and completely free of facial hair, turned up in a Santa outfit, beer in hand, doing a sort of wonky shuffle-dance. His mum, in a summer dress, was slapping her thigh, laughing loudly at some joke one of his aunts told her. My friend was at the food table pouring generous amounts of mint sauce on his plate of beef.
I sat alone at the other side of the pool, watching. Having been raised Muslim, it was an uncomfortable situation. I attended a Catholic secondary school, and I was fairly familiar with the tenets and culture of the faith. Nevertheless, it was discomforting to think that my being there suggested some kind of compliance with a religion that wasn’t mine. When my friend came over to pass me some beef, he saw the look on my face and said instantly, “Don’t worry man, it’s halal.” It wasn’t what plastered that look on my face, but it indirectly addressed why I felt so out of place.
“Come join the party,” he added. “I want to introduce you to my cousin. He’s a level 42 Barbarian in Diablo 2.”
My uncertain smile broadened. “No way!”
