D’oh! How To Avoid Christmas In Bangkok

Luckily Thailand has never been colonized.

Take the christianized Philippines, where each Good Friday they nail their own Jesusses to the cross.

Because in the Christian Philippines, they celebrate Christian holidays with fervor.

Nevertheless even in flexible Buddhist Thailand Christian holidays are cherished. With the dire consequence that the very time of the year lies ahead many are dying for – some in eager anticipation, many though in plain pain:

Christmas.

Forgive this political incorrect, if not tumultuous rant, but you can’t always be constructive and will find a silver lining:

A few days ago BangkokDan got his first dose of this year’s festive season at Central Chidlom. In the background the world’s most worst song was playing: Jingle Bells.

Jingle Bells stands for the anti-Christmas.

Do a search for Jingle Bells on YouTube, it’s plain scary. You even find vids of dogs barking the song. If one doesn’t take the necessary precautions, one may soon be condemned to sing along the song in the happy surrounding of plastic trees and joyful celebrants.

But how to evacuate from Christmas.

As suddenly even Antarctica looks like a place to be.

Sure thing, even BangkokDan doesn’t want to avoid the high tech gifts for his son that are more of a self-therapy for dad – giving him the chance to play with gadgets he never had a chance to play with.

But just thinking about what to donate to my wife pushes BangkokDan to the threshold of panic.

Because whatever it is, it will be the wrong thing – except that 3 carat diamond, but hey, life of husband and wife may have slightly different priorities.

What brings us back to possible evacuation plans for Christmas. But in case you haven’t booked your flight or hotel yet: It’s too late anyway.

Seats and beds along possible escape routes are long ago taken. Or prohibitively overpriced.

Looks like you’re stuck in Bangkok’s Christmas marketing hype then – a hype being celebrated in honor of an old Jewish rebel nailed to a cross many centuries ago.

But hey, Christmas is the celebration of light! Days will become longer again! The light of hope and life shall be back soon!

Not in Thailand though where days are the same year in, year out. Every day in the kingdom ends after 6 pm when the sun falls from the sky.

So why then Thailand’s alleluja obsession?

As we all know, Thais love to celebrate anything and glitter and presents. Even more so when shopping centers during the season of the holy commercialism are cooled down below zero to finally being able to wear the turtleneck or the heavy winter boots. The best part being though, Thais don’t even have to be drunk to celebrate.

Have some food and some Thai friends over – and they’re partying the very second you switch on the music. Whereas Westerners have to be intoxicated first with strong liquids before they’re able to even slighly resemble their Thai counterparts who go off like greased lightning.

Christmas is just another shading of the Thai people’s deeply engrained urge of having to party – a gift Westerners can never achieve.

Or just imagine yourself celebrating songkran back home in the West. Your neighbors will jail you for cheerfully hosing them down while presenting them with flowers.

So if you’re still stuck in the Bangkok where the snowmen never melt, you have no other way out than accepting the plastic tree fever and styrofoam snow.

Leaving you with the only honorable alternative of raising yourself above all the fuzz and enduring it with stoic peace of mind. Launch your counter offensive: baffle your family and friends. Wear a T-shirt sporting Rudolph the Reindeer.

As you make everybody happy around you, you yourself will become happy. And why not hum along the classic “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

Be a positive force. Remember: The festive Christmas season usually is the time when family dramas happen. As people are not used to be together anymore. Laughing in the morning, but beating the shit out of it in the evening has become a most common Christmas motto.

But then again, sometimes we need these outer pressures to come together again.

But as said, consider yourself lucky that you’re not living in the christianized Philippines, where they torture their people with Jingle Bells practically all year around. A sure ticket to insanity.

Probably the reason why on Good Friday they have all those volunteering Jesusses desperately looking for a way out.

Or how do you get over Christmas?

Most sincerely: A merry festive season in the true spirit of Christmas to you in advance – and being at it: Send in an image of the most exotic Christmas decoration or whatever you encounter around here!