I am not hear to defend anything but a concern in changing the nature of a day with meaning into another. Take the tradition of Chinese who celebrate Chinese lunar new year. The night before the new year is a night we called “tuan yuan fan　团圆饭“. It is a night where grown up children would go home to their parents, if they still alive to join for a feast. It is suppose to be meant for a time to gather as a family, not to forget each other, the relationships; a time to catch up, a time to express our thanks to our parents.

Over the years, this night has gradually become very commercialise. No longer, daughters inherit their mothers’ special dishes, a time where the in-laws were busy in the kitchen preparing food from everyone while chatting in the kitchen. The meaning of ‘tuan yuan fan’ means a perfect gathering (completeness) not missing anyone, also has the meaning of gather in harmony. But with commercialisation, the restaurants take the limelight over the dishes of the mothers.

Yes, it is very tiring to prepare a feast for a family, especially a big one. As parents grow older, children out of good intentions ask the parents not to cook but to go out, especially in good times when everyone’s earning has gone up.

Parents of course would say, yes it was quite tiring to prepare food at older age. They nagged, complained a little but it could be just for attentions, just want to hear us again to say “mum, your cooking is still the best!” Instead, with everything available as instant convenience like the 3-in-1 coffee, instant noodles, with money to afford, why not go to the restaurants instead?

It then changes the whole scene from a perfect gathering becoming a chance to show-off who would spend more to hold at a famous restaurant, arguments arise for who should pay more, which restaurants to go and so on and so forth.

The restaurants are here to make money, they won’t give you the luxury to relax and chat. A typical 10 course Chinese dinner won’t last more than 2 hours. And then what? Everyone say goodbye and go home. Communication is a luxury. Catching up seem to be really in need to catch up with time. More of hi and bye most of the time.

Christmas is the same. Too tired to prepare a feast for kins. Go to restaurants. Now even the supermarket would prepare the cooked for you, just order it. Buying a gift is so convenient now that you just pick and let the part time student working at the gift wrap counter to do the wrapping for you.

Called me an old fashion. I like to wrap gifts myself. It is a way to say “I love you”, “I care about you”. If they are so important to you, there is always time to do something for them. I love to cook food for our kins, my wife too. Actually to confess, we did wonder if we should go to the supermarket to order the cooked food. The problem we found out was that, it was only available after 12 noon and we planned to gather for lunch. So we had no choice but to prepare ourselves, of course not the ham but the beef, the salmon, salads and so on.. And the verdict? Almost all the food was consumed. Everyone happy and satisfied. We also managed to spend a couple of hours around the dinning table to chat, talk and catch up.

Yes, it is the problem with time isn’t it? Everything we want to do we ask “do we have enough time to do so?”. If not, we look for services to do it on our behalf. Many of us ended up in rushing to “been there, see that, done that” kind of going through the motion.

The commercialisation has in some way, I feel, eroded the meaning and values to become something very superficial. In the end, it becomes an obligation. Just like the Chinese ‘tuan yuan fan’ dinner, if both parents passed away, siblings couldn’t be bothered to come together, the connection is lost.

This Christmas, we were tired. But we were glad to have everyone together.