Christmas Memories at Dalat

Christmas at Dalat

When I was a kid at Dalat, the long break was over the Christmas holidays; summer was only one month long—basically, the month of June. After first semester, we took taxis from Dalat to Saigon and then boarded Air Vietnam or Thai Airways for the flight to Bangkok. Dad and Mom were always there to greet us, and we spent a couple of days looking for presents for each other in the Thai capital. Then we took the 12-hour train ride up to Banphai and our little house “on stilts.”

No one in the whole province of Khon Kaen knew anything about Christmas back then except our family and the Christians in the churches. No Santa Clause. No “Jingle Bells.” No fake cotton-ball snow adorning Christmas trees. Mom and Dad did have a small artificial tree that had been spray painted white. We attached balls and tinsel, but as we didn't have electricity, there were no lights. No one had figured out how to make kerosene Christmas tree lights. But all the churches had plays and skits illustrating the real story of Christmas.

Dad raised a turkey in a small bamboo basket cage, but when we killed it, we weren't too hungry as it had become more of a pet than dinner. Who wants to eat a pet? Mom roasted it on a small oven on top of our kerosene stove, but it proved so tough that we could hardly even cut the meat!

Christmas morning was always special. Dad easily won the prize for being the most excited. One year he woke us all up at 4:30 a.m., we read the Christmas story, ate Mom's cinnamon buns with Planta margarine on them, and opened up our gifts. Then we all went back to bed as it was still dark outside!

Two Christmas gifts really stand out to me. When I was in about sixth grade, I wanted a Monopoly game. One of my friends at Dalat had one, and I loved playing it. My parents explained that there were no Monopoly games in Bangkok, trying to “cushion” my disappointment; what I didn't know was that six months earlier they'd written to my grandparents in Virginia and had them send a game out. By the time the battered carton arrived in Banphai, Dad decided he had to do something special: so he made a wooden box especially for me. It had little slots like a cash register for the money, a couple of pigeon holes for the houses, hotels, and playing pieces, two slots for the “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards, and a lid complete with a small hasp and lock. I loved it and lugged it back and forth from Banphai to Dalat every vacation.

By the time I was 16, we had moved to Chaiyapoom, a different province that had electricity. Dad had ordered an electric razor for me from the States. I was so excited—even though I hardly had a whisker! After we opened all the gifts, Dad went to show me how the razor worked, explaining how to clean it, etc. He then plugged it in—you guessed it—to the 220 volt outlet and promptly burned it out! It went “zzzziiinnnggggg!” and there was a small puff of smoke and that sickeningly sweet smell of an appliance that was never going to run again. Needless to say, Dad felt terrible.

But mostly the gifts we exchanged when I was growing up were very Asian: tubes of Colgate, bars of Lux, an occasional Cadbury chocolate bar from Bangkok, or a few meters of cloth for Mom or my sisters so Mom could sew dresses. One year, after a furlough, my parents brought back an aluminum Christmas tree with a “color wheel.” We put it on the porch so our neighbours could enjoy it as well!

We celebrated Christmas with the Christians in the small Thai churches in Khon Kaen and Chaiyapoom provinces. This often included a feast of chicken curry, som thum (a spicy papaya salad), and some nua-sawan (literally, “heavenly beef,” a salty jerky-like meat) that went well with sticky rice. Dad told the Christmas story, the young people acted it out, and Mom used flannel graph with the children.

Times have changed. I was recently back in Thailand, and now Christmas carols piped over loudspeakers in the shopping malls compete with cash register “cha-chings” and Visa swipes. Skinny Thai men don oversized Santa suits and ho-ho-ho welcomes to shoppers. Christmas trees, fake snow and icicles abound. But one thing hasn't changed: the only place you can find the real meaning of Christmas is in the churches and in the hearts of those of us who have accepted Jesus as our Saviour.