A pensive thought about Christmas

If Laziness is accumulative, I must have fallen into the deep abyss of it. It has been over a week since my return from Japan but just didnt find the urgency to update about my Tokyo trip. Somehow, I just manage to keep putting it away. Well, it isnt some earth shattering trip, so I figure it can wait....

Anycase, here it is. The full glory of my thoroughly enjoyable and relaxed trip, not to mention a really good catching up dinner with my gf after such a long spell of not seeing and talking to each other being countries apart. It is always nice to find yourself immersing in good company of friends you havent seen for a while, to reminisce about old times, reliving the present, and looking foward to the future. What a journey we have covered for ourselves, away from our motherland. How far have we come since our early days of taking classes together. Ah...those carefree days, those lovely lovely carefree days....

I love Japan for its quirks and myriad of mind boggling products. Most of all, I love the way Christmas festive is so wonderfully and magically preserved in its original context, without the vast contusion and mishandling like the western countries with the grossly abuse and contamination by people firmly rooted with the idea of "political correctness". Of course, Christmas will always be overly commercialised, but yet in here, in a foreign land where I could hardly speak the language fluently, the spirit, anticipation and excitement of Christmas is strangely stirred up within me.

Here in the land of the rising sun, Christmas is adored and adorned, basking in full glory in all window displays, street lights, costumes etc without the rave and rant nor having any misgivings about Father Christmas.

As I admire the hanging lights changing its shades like fairy lights, I was filled with a sense of unfamiliar peace and joy. Happiness, can be such a simple thing.

When I strolled out into the open, the field of blue lights left me in awe! I went up to higher elevation to discover the field of blue led, a moving and changing composition of the universe and the zodiac stars as in the sky. I was so absorbed by the blue beauty before me that I willingly stood in the cold - just staring into this strange zen-like serenity, a welling undisturbed bubble of contentment despite the relentless and merciless cold wind in my face. This tranquil moment is a rare moment, to be thinking of nothing but beauty of the universe.

Here, The special festival is so NOT being wrongly mixed up with the religious aspect of Jesus christ. Christmas, and thankfully rightly given its due in Japan, in the right context, and magically spanned out along the streets without the overblown American full-blown antagonism towards a very simple happy day that makes every wide Bambi-eye child bubbling with imagination and soaking themselves in the magical world of elves, santa claus, cookies and milk and presents.

For the child within us, what is so wrong to throw away the caution for one day, and just immerse ourselves in this festive that should be filled with warmth and spirit of giving? Why are some people so intent to murder every possible good things in the pretext of "correctness"? What happen to simply kicking back our shoes, forget whatever had gone wrong, and just remember what had gone so right in our lives?

So there I was walking along the streets in Tokyo, checking out all the different Christmas season items, decoratives and displays, feelings a sense of wonderment I havent felt a long time in western countries and my own city.

Its ironical. How a most westernised festival such as Christmas, is most wonderfully up kept in a land within Asia, by Asians. Such mockery indeed.