let lemons be angry

Isn't it too early for Christmas lights? I'm still in july, and already there are "fa la la"s in the supermarket.

I'll be in japan for Christmas, absent from the yearly Tan clan thing. What is Christmas, what is Singapore holiday culture, and what is just Tan? Travelling helps me break my world down into separate truths.

There was a present I didn't get to give one year, and I think that was neither Christmas nor Singapore. It was just Me. I needed a reason to give a present, and I used Christmas. I keep it around my neck now like a charmless talisman, to remind me never to give too much away again.

And we always chant as we walk under the Orchard road lights, Let this Christmas be meaningful. The lights put the do-good in us in December--the need to feel love warm and fuzzy all around. I still want all this: cranberry body butter, candles, turkeys, carols, fake snow on fake pines. But let's not kid ourselves anymore. It's not Christmas we're celebrating.