Christmas Day this year was quiet the same way it has been quiet for the last couple of years.
It is not something I mind; I love the trees, the colors and the lights, but I have a spiritual appreciation for the solemnity of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I love the calming silence that the celebration brings.
That's not to say that I don't miss the carolling sessions of years past, nor is it to say that I don't miss the boisterous, lively celebrations of my growing years.
Neither is it to say that I'm alienating myself from the festivities of the occasion and the celebratory atmosphere.
I'm just happy with what I have the same way I am happy with the memories that I own, with the new memories that I will create, with the traditions that I have today, and with the people around me.
This year though, I found myself unexpectedly thinking of the time when a group of us sang carols to the patients at a ward in a public hospital. That was a very long time ago, so long that the building in which the ward was located now houses a research center for Neuroscience, and the ward itself has been relocated upstairs.
The intention had been to bring Christmas cheer to the patients, but now that I think about it, we might not have brought them as much cheer as we hoped- not with our first appearance at least.
Dressed in color coordinated outfits of white tops and black bottoms, we had entered the lights-off ward in a row of two singing Silent Night and bearing flickering candles in our hands.
It doesn't sound so bad when you see it from our point of view, but I suppose no one had considered how it might look like from the patients' point of view.
Imagine, there you are, recuperating in bed with the ceiling fan whirring above your head, and then all of a sudden, the lights are switched off, the whole ward is thrown into pitch darkness, and just at the very moment when you think you're going to panic, you see two rows of flickering candle flames come in through the door of the ward, accompanied by the solemn, almost haunting strains of a Christmas carol... and when the lights finally come on as they break into a livelier song, you see that they're all dressed in white tops and black bottoms- and the ladies are in red lipstick, even the younger ones.
Not the most liveliest of carollers on Christmas Eve, I should say.
I guess there had been so much concern about our quality of singing (we weren't choir material) to bother about our outfits and our introduction.
It's been so many years- I guess the patients would have by now forgotten. Yet, for some odd reason, I haven't. It might be due the fact that I have a picture, or it might be due the fact that I've been thinking about the same area of the hospital recently.
I don't know.
But a memory it remains, and if I would say, a pretty interesting one!
It's been so many years- I guess the patients would have by now forgotten. Yet, for some odd reason, I haven't. It might be due the fact that I have a picture, or it might be due the fact that I've been thinking about the same area of the hospital recently.
I don't know.
But a memory it remains, and if I would say, a pretty interesting one!