Christmas Memories

Although I am not Christian, I love Christmas. I have many memories from Christmases past. I have always loved the pageantry associated with Christmas from when I was a small child. It is a season of joy and celebration. A time for cooking and enjoying good food, community and decorating. The Christmas season encompasses all these plus it has such a magical air to it! I love the beauty of Christmas trees and decorations, sending and receiving Christmas cards, singing Christmas carols, Santa Claus, dressing up, giftgiving and parties. Of course not forgetting the most important reason of all being the religious significance of Christmas.

Going back to my childhood once again, my earliest memory of Christmas is when I was around 3 years old when we used to live in Los Angeles, California. I remember visiting my neighbor Heather, she used to live a few apartments down at the UCLA student Housing complex. She was about the same age as me. I have a vivid memory of her mother baking ginger bread cookies in the kitchen. Heather gave me a candy cane filled with chocolates. She was wearing a pretty green tartan dress with a pretty brooch of a miniature christmas tree studded with colored stones. I immediately fell in love with her brooch.

Later, we went to Heather's house for their Chrismas party. In the living room there was a huge decorated Christmas tree which was all lit up. Alll the kids were given gifts of little wristwatches.I have pictures of me at the party, unfortunately they are in my childhood album back in Kandy. I have to wait to post them to the blog at a later date.

We returned to Sri Lanka in December 1970 just before Christmas. We flew Pan Am and the inside of the aircraft was decorated for Christmas. On our meal tray there was a little snowman made of wood which I kept for the longest time. Our plane stopped for refuelling in Anchorage, Alaska, it was snowing, just perfect for the season!

In 1971 while we were living in the Gal Bungalawa (Stone Bungalow), Mahakande, our neighbors celebrated Christmas. They were known to my parents from their undergraduate days at the University of Peradeniya. Our neighbors also had just returned to Sri Lanka from postgraduate studies in England and the husband was on the Faculty at University of Peradeniya. While he was Buddhist, his wife was a Christian lady from Moratuwa. She was very nice, friendly and was an excellent cook. She was wonderful at baking cakes and all the Sri Lankan short eats such as patties, cutlets and rolls. According to my Mother, she herself learnt a lot about making short eats and cooking meats such as liver curry from our neighbor. That Christmas, they had the most wonderful Christmas tree with beautiful decorations brought from England plus twinkling electric lights. I remember some of the decorations were little christmas lanterns with a candle inside which I thought were gorgeous.

The next Christmas I remember is after we had moved to a 'C' bungalow within the main Campus of University of Peradeniya. At that time I was around six years old and our household helper Meenam revived my interst in Chrismas once again. Meenam was a young Tamil girl from a Tea Estate in Maskeliya. She spoke Sinhala quite well since the previous family that she worked for were also Sinhalese.That family was Catholic and they had two little girls. Meenam used to tell me stories about how they had celebrated Christmas. The father of the family had dressed up as Father Christmas ( Nattal Seeya) and had brought the girls presents and they had had a beautiful Christmas tree. After hearing that I wanted to have my own Christmas tree! So my father got me a Cypress branch and I was able to decorate a Christmas tree with home made decorations. My mother helped me to make the decorations, she drew a star on cardboard for the tree top and we decorated it with gold colored foil. We also used gold tinsel garlands. I don't remember specifically what the other decorations were but they were all cardboard cutouts covered with colored foil from chocolate wrappers. My brother and I were at Kandy Convent in Montessori at the time. Meenam used to wait for us till we finished. Coincidentally, it happened that while he waited for us, she saw the two girls (at whose home she worked previously) also at Kandy Convent.

In 1974 when I went onto Grade One we really got into the Christmas season at school. I remember we sang many Christmas carols. 'Kalakata pera e Bethleheme' was a Sinhala carol that we sang in the same tune as 'Mary's boychild Jesus Christ'. We also sang all the popular carols and Christmas songs in English such as 'Silent Night', 'Away in a Manger' and 'Santa Claus is coming to town'. Our Grade class teacher also decorated a cypress Christmas tree in our classroom. I loved the smell of the cypress. The deorations were not very sophisticated but it was lovely nonetheless.

As we prepared to close the term for the Christmas holidays, our class teacher who we called Bernie teacher told us we could send her a Christmas card if we liked. She wrote her address on the blackboard in English. We all copied it down, I wrote it at the back of my Maths book. Bernie teacher reviewed what I had written and made some minor corrections to the lettering. But she was quite impressed at how well I had copied the address in English, considering the fact that English was a second language at our school. If my memory serves me correctly, she took it to the front of the class and showed it to the other girls as an example of good writing. During the Christmas vacation I sent a Christmas card to Bernie Teacher. It was a wonderful surprise to receive a card back from her! It was a small handmade card made out of a beautiful textured cream colored card paper. She had pasted a picture of a pair of bells on the front and written inside the card in black stylised writing. I was so pleased to receive the card and thought it was so beautiful, it was very precious to me.

A few years after we had moved to Fiji, during Christmas 1978, I decided that my cupboard dollhouse deserved a proper Christmas celebration. Hence, I decorated a Christmas tree and fireplace with candles in the living room. All my dolls sat down to Christmas dinner replete with Christmas Cake in the ktchen. I was so excited about my mini Christmas scenery that I asked my father to take pictures of the scenes.

Below are the pictures :

Christmas in the dollhouse living room

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Christmas dinner in the dollhouse

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Around the same time, my mother was given a gift of a cookbook authored by Charmaine Solomon called 'The Asian Cookbook'. It was a huge book, a coffee table edition. It had beautiful full page photographs and she had devoted a whole chapter to her native Sri Lanka. In it was the receipe for 'Ceylon Christmas Cake'. For Christmas 1980 my mother tried out the receipe from her book. It was a knockout, that cake was the most delicious Christmas cake I had ever tasted! That began a tradition of baking Christmas cake in my family that lasted for over and beyond the next decade.

Around 1981 I visited my friend who lived in Fiji , their family was also from Sri Lanka. For Christmas she had a table top mini christmas tree decorated with colored baubels. Although the branches were made of plastic it looked wonderful. After seeing her tree I decided I had to get a plastic tree as well. So I went ahead and got the same kind of tree and decorated it with store bought decorations such as tinsel, colored bells and baubels.

In 1985 I moved onto Australia with my mother and brothers and I completed Year 12 of high school in Brisbane. As Christmas approached Christmas decorations were put out for sale. I spotted some reasonably priced packets of decorations at the Coles department store. They were made out of rigifoam and made in China. But they really looked nice. I bought some of those and also bought 'ribbony' Christmas baubles. Our father was working in Marshall Islands at the time. So for the long holidays in December we all joined him there. For Christmas I once again set up my mini platic tree and hung all the decorations I had bought. It was the most complete tree I had decorated to date. My mother made the Ceylon Christmas cake and my father decided it was excellent to distribute it to all his work associates. So my parents visited all of them and took them Christmas cake which they all loved.

My decorated Christmas Tree-December 1985

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Christmas Tree in front of City Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia-December 1989

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At the end of 1989, I had finished university and I joined my parents and younger brother in the Marshall Islands. I bought another table top Christmas tree there. It was kind of pinus like and the branches looked like bottle brush.

After that I stopped decorating trees for a while. After I had come back to the US and lived there for a couple of years, one Winter I got the urge to decorate for Christmas once again. By then it was Christmas 2005. Every evening as I went home from work, I used to pass the '99 cent' store. There I saw these little Christmas trees which were real live pines. They had decorations on them as well and you could plant them after Christmas was over. So I decided to buy two of those. Then I searched the store for more decorations, I got tinsel, pointsettias, red bows and a red 'stocking'. I took them all home and decorated the fireplace with them. I also found a little Nativity Scene there which I placed on the mantle piece. I decided I needed more decorations so I went to 'Target' and got little glass baubels and a packet of assorted mini decorations to hang on the trees. My Christmas decorations were all up and finally I took pictures.

Below are the pictures I took. (Double click each picture for a closeup view)

Christmas 2005

Below are pictures of Christmas decorations at the 'Grove' shopping center in Los Angeles, California from Christmas 2008:

Notice Santa's Sleigh behind the giant Christmas tree.

(Double click each picture below for a closeup view)

Christmas tree closer view

Ginger bread house below

Christmas Tree at the '3rd St. Farmer's Market' next to 'The Grove ' shopping center.



This Christmas I won't be decorating , but I am planning to bake a scrumptious cake according to a Middle Eastern receipe. I will be using rulang (semolina) and cashews and orange juice in this cake. I'm actually supposed to use walnuts but I decided to make it Sri Lankan by adding cashews instead.

Day trip - Kandy to Colombo and English High Tea

My Mother and I caught the inter-city train to Colombo from Peradeniya Junction early Wednesday morning at about 6.30am. It was the day of the latest partial solar eclipse. It was our first time riding in the observation car. We bought our tickets a few days in advance so we sat right at the rear end of the train facing the rear window. When we got on the train there was a lady sitting there, apparently her seat was the one behind us so she changed seats. I had expected there to be foreign tourists in the observation carriage but everyone was local. Most of them were sleeping, I guess they were used to riding in the observation car. We had a panoramic view from where we sat but the carriage was also a little warm from the sun against which we had to draw the curtains from time to time.

We arrived at Colombo Fort railway station at about 9.05am. Then we used the toilets after paying Rs 5, but the toilets were not clean. Since we were in a hurry we had to make do. After that we caught a bus to Kollupitiya and then another bus to UNDP office where we had to get a form signed. Coming out of the office we saw Shanti Vihar and decided to have lunch there although it was early. My Mother decided to order rice for both of us. Bad choice, I had wanted to order paratha or dosa, maybe next time! After that we walked a long way, then finally took a 3 wheeler to Liberty Plaza. We wondered around inside, there were the usual crowd including locals and foreign tourists. We bought a few articles of Sri Lanka made clothing which seemed reasonably priced. After leaving Liberty Plaza we went to a clothing shop close to Galle road and bought an Indian handloom sari for my Mother in a subdued earth color that she now prefers to wear.

By then it was time for my Mother's appointment at the US Embassy to collect her new US passport. Two weeks previously my Mother had submitted her application for a new passport. At that time I had to hang around sweating, waiting for her across the street in the blistering heat. This time my Mother had discovered that US nationals were allowed inside the Embassy. So I showed them my US passport and was allowed to accompany my Mother inside. Once there, she was promptly given her new passport and we were on our way.

We had one more stop to make before returning to Kandy. I had always wanted to try an English High Tea in Sri Lanka. I had heard that the Hilton High Teas were legendary. I called them up and I came to the conclusion that they were too pricey and I would be getting music and a vast assortment of food that went far beyond the authentic English High Tea experience that I was looking for. I had done some previous homework on a few other places serving High Tea and decided upon the Mt. Lavinia Hotel.

So we walked back to Kollupitiya Junction and caught a bus to Mount Lavinia. We told the bus conductor that we wanted to go to the Mt. Lavinia Hotel and aked him to tell us when we reached our stop. As we approached our stop, a lady sitting behind us was helpful enough to tell us that we should get off at the next stop and take a 3 wheeler from the main road. So we did as she had instructed us.

We arrived at the Mt. Lavinia Hotel around 3pm as they served their Bicentennial High Tea from 3.30pm until 6pm. It was served at the Terrace Restaurant of the Hotel which is located next to the Pool.

Each of us was presented with a three tiered serving tray filled with one each of the following items: scone with jam and clotted cream, finger sandwiches (cucumber, fish, cheese, asparagus) , chocolate eclair, curried fish tart, fruit tart, chocolate covered strawberry, chocolate cake and fruitcake. Of course, a pot of tea with cream and sugar was included. The price per head including taxes came out to Rs. 800. I was very happy with the tea and accompaniments which were pretty authentic. The location was ideal to enjoy a relaxing afternoon tea.We had a beautiful view of the ocean and we could see how the Colombo skyline curved down from Colombo Harbour all the way to Mt. Lavinia. Great location for people watching too, people were eating or just relaxing in the wood framed rattan chairs of the Terrace and others swimming or lazing about the pool. There was a mix of locals and tourists on the Terrace and in the pool and everyone seemed to be having fun. The charge for using the pool (according to the staff who served us) was Rs. 600 for the whole day and included towels, a beach chair and umbrella.

We spent about two hours enjoying our tea at the Terrace. Then it was time to return, so we caught a 3 wheeler back to the main road again and a bus back to Pettah which took us almost one hour. We immediately caught an intercity bus heading to Kandy which departed at about 6pm. Since we boarded the bus as it was about to leave we had to sit on the jump seats in the isle of the bus. The seats were fine except when we people at the back had to get off and we had to stand up and fold our seats back to let them get past. Fortunately, this didn't happen more than four times.We had encountered a lot of traffic and it took us an hour just to reach Kadawatha. After that the traffic lessened and the total journey from Pettah to Peradeniya (Kandy) turned out to be almost 3.5 hours.

Miniature clay cooking pots

When I was about six I used to go to Colombo from Peradeniya with my Dad to get my eyes checked at the Vision House in Colombo. Most times we caught the train to Colombo leaving in the morning and catching the train back in the afternoon. Sometimes, my Dad used to drive to Colombo in our light blue fiat car. One time my we stopped by Kalagedihena which is the stretch of road where they sell clay pottery and my Dad bought me my own set of earthenware mini cooking pots. On another trip he bought me another set of mini pots made of aluminium.

One of our household helpers at the time was a girl from a village in Hunnasgiriya. Sometimes when she cooked lunch I used to ask her to put a portion of the curry in one of my little pots and cook it with firewood in my little hearth which she had made out of clay for me.