The gifts of Christmas past and present
Christmas, schmistmas, you say? The longstanding tradition of giving (or rather, buying... ) Presents for loved ones near and far is, fortunately for retailers, very much intact
SO this is Christmas. And what have we done? Blitzed through a sleighful of wrapping paper, ribbons and cash, is what. Goodwill towards mankind usually reaches an orgasmic crescendo of ka-chings around this time of the year.
Even so, the modern festive season is universes apart from the Twelve Days of Christmas, the carol in which an assortment of fowl and instrument-wielding noisemakers are presented as gifts. It must be noted that this 12-day period starts from Christmas Day itself and not a bally day earlier. Today, the season is more like The 61 Days of Christmas. Tinsel and gift-wrapping enjoy a long retail runway, stretching improbably from Nov 1 to Dec 31. This envelopes Singles' Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Super Saturday and Christmas. The term for this phenomenon of expansion is "Christmas creep.
Today, Thanksgiving occupies significant local mental acreage even though Singapore is more chicken rice than roast turkey, because of the Black Friday sale that falls on the day after it. This is a relatively new development - up till 2008, "Black Friday" in Singapore had meant stock market crashes, not website crashes.
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