Politically correct Christmas and Chinese New Year

I had worried for several days about whether I could avoid the political incorrectness of wishing my Jewish friends Happy Christmas by sending Season's Greetings, and having passed that, am now on to the multiple New Year dilemma, so I am glad that a friend who occupies the moral high ground when it comes to Jewish observance, has made the first move and solved my problem by emailing me Happy New Year. I can now reciprocate.

In Singapore life is much easier; political correctness is the opposite. Every shopping mall, restaurant and citizen is expected to celebrate all nine officially recognized religions.

After New Year, Chinese New Year provides more opportunities for exchanging oranges, red packets of money, sending cards, ordering festive dinners and buying bargains in the shops.

The Jewish New Year is in the autumn (which Americans call Fall).

Angela Lansbury, author. Please see my posts on travel on my blog on travel. My books are on Lulu.com and Amazon.

New Year's Eve 2007 and when we've finished the glass of champagne 2008

I drank two glasses of wine with dinner in London and then we received an email from Australia - or was it New Zealand? Same difference. They said it was already 2008 and they saw the sun first.

I did not allow myself to be put down by one upmanship. I am a repartee-totaller.

'Well,' I replied, 'lucky you. We, on the other hand, still have a few more hours of 2007 to enjoy. We shall live a few hours longer than you. You just get older quicker.'

It's New Year's Eve 19 - oops - 2007. Two drinks and I can't even remember which age I mustn't reveal.

Happy New Year, my dear friends, with your rascally, knowing grins.

Are you at home drowning your sorrows? Or out drowning other people's. (Sometimes it's better if nobody remembers what others said.)

I am indoors. And I don't mind not going out. The midnight fireworks on TV are much better than going out catching cold. Most people I know already have colds.

I have reached that stage of life when I realise that I am small. And therefore sitting, in front of a TV, watching, is more comfortable than standing, at the back of a crowd of taller people. Looking amongst their large feet for the missing glove.

I have already fallen in snow. I have sat on a sledge with husky dogs. And run across a muddy field in high heels in order to watch noisy fireworks.

Followed by burned sausages. And drinks in collapsed cups.

I have been drenched by a water fountain. I once dropped my camera in the water. Then I lost my glasses looking down trying to retrieve the camera.

I have sat outdoors in the romantic tropics chilled by a sea breeze. And sat twirling disobedient spagetti. Whilst trying to impress somebody else's boss whose name I have forgotten.

Whilst watching a too-close snake charmer. Whilst swatting doodlebug mosquitos, the ones which makes a noise before coming to land. And being bitten, by mosquitos.

I have also set off a hotel fire alarm with sparklers in the bathroom. I have paid ridiculous sums to hotels in order to pull Xmas crackers with people who spoke German, Russian and Serbo-don't know-at. As well as holding hands with total strangers singing Auld Lang Syne with Japanese accents.

I worked out what Auld Lang Syne is all about. It's about the old acquaintance who should never be forgotten. What's 'is name. You know his name. It's John. He sends you a Christmas card. John who? Where? And when? Then he emails on New Year's Eve. That mildly obscene suggestive message.

You tell everybody it's a wrong number. You hope you are right. You send him good wishes anyway. Just in case. In case what? Just in case.

In this household we have a Xmas truce, a bit like WWI, or the Great War. My husband turns up with the 5 CD player, a Christmas gift I asked for. On Boxing Day he tells me his financial needs for a divorce.

Being atheists, and rationalists, and of Jewish extraction, means we can economise on gift and food. We celebrate Christmas with a meal out the day after. We used to buy presents in the sale. Now we just promise to buy presents in the sale.

New Year's Eve can be celebrated the evening before. So we went to a Chinese restaurant last night. Today we had leftovers for lunch. Plum sauce.

Tonight, New Year's Eve, we are collecting points for our retirement in eternity. Our 91-year-old auntie came over from her 'home' for dinner.

We could not lure back our prodigal son, not even with the promise of home-cooked fatted calf supper. But he will come over for lunch tomorrow. If he wakes up. Or tea. Or dinner.

I am told that it's not worthwhile opening a whole bottle of champagne just for two of us. So maybe when we have four together tomorrow it will be worthwhile. When it comes to sharing champagne, I am not convinced that 'the more the merrier'.

Our friends have forgotten us. But total strangers we have never even met have written.

Restaurants thanked us. We even had Christmas cards from shops and businesses we never visited. I always get out last year's Christmas cards. So long as it looks like you have a few on display, that's enough. Nobody else reads them.

Tonight, New Year's Eve, by mid evening everybody stuck at home has run out of people to whom they can reveal their plight and started emailing me. Or are they out emailing from mobile phones, to make themselves appear busy?

To all wellwishers, and everybody, thank you for your kind wishes and kind thoughts. Even if you were too shy to say anything. (Speak up at the back there.) I wish you health, wealth, prosperity and happiness, all year and for a long life. I hope all your dreams for yourself and myself will prove exciting in fantasy and maybe one day in reality.

I wished somebody Happy New Ear. I copied that to everybody. My spell checker never noticed.

My spell checker doesn't like Auld and syne. It doesn't like wellwishers either.

Pearl's 90th Birthday Party September 11th 2006

Monday, September 11, 2006
Pearl's 90th Birthday Party
Pearl's 90th birthday celebration on Sunday Ocober 10th was a great success, although she had thwarted any advance planning by saying she was too tired to go out to lunch or dinner and simply wanted to stay at home for tea. The result was a mad rush on the day to buy a suitable sized birthday cake and extra cakes.

I drove to Morrisons supermarket to look for an exciting birthday cake to make her feel special. The only decorated cakes were footballs and kiddie cakes. But I was delighted to find a delicious Thorntons toffee cake topped by tiny dice-shaped pieces of fudge.

However, before committing myself, I had to confer with my son. We ran the whole telephone conference like a military operation. I was stalking the cakes in Morrisons, talking surreptitiously on my mobile phone to my son Anthony, who was in Tesco. He was, surreptitiously, scouting out the rival cake situation.

He selected the largest traditional white iced top fruit cake with marzipan. This cake was meant to be the lowest level of a wedding cake. The nice flat surface was ready to decorate.

I purchased Happy Birthday to go on top. I added the numbers for ninety.

I was delighted to discover irresistible twisted candles and candles shaped like champagne bottles. So that we did not overload on sugar, I stocked up with some savoury snacks: including falafel (fried chickpea balls), taramasalata and chopped herring.

I drank orange juice. (Not enough vegetables for the five portions a day, which should be seven. Later when I got home I made freshly-squeezed orange juice and ate melon.)

On Saturday I had bought the best and most beautiful bunch of flowers, pinks and purples, containing perfect roses and cute carnations and dramatic giant lilies.

We had enough flowers to fill two huge flower vases. The perfume wafted across the room creating heavenly aroma therapy. Relatives from overseas (Steve and Tami) sent more flowers including cheerful yellow sunflowers.

Photos and Memories
Pearl brought out a box of photos, large wedding photos, hers, and her mother's. Next came family certificates, the barmitzvah certificate of Trevor, her younger son, the graduation of her older son, his first graduation.

Pearl said: 'He was at Southampton and then Oxford, and then became a professor!' She smiled proudly.

Exams
'They wouldn't put him in for the eleven plus! So David sent him to a private tutor. Then he went to the poly, and passed his exams and went to uni. Here's his exam certificate!'

Anthony said, 'Lots of people succeed in life and business without passing school exams.'

After another think, Anthony asked, 'Why did you think passing the eleven plus was so important?'

Pearl explains, 'They didn't have Comprehensives in those days. You needed to get into grammar school, so you could take O level exams, and A levels, and go to University.'

Pearl continues, 'We went to the parents' evening and they said he knew the answers. But he didn't put his hand up.'

Anthony and I hear this twice. I accept it unquestioningly.

But Anthony puzzles over the significance, the incongruity. 'If he doesn't put his hand up, how do they know he knows the answers? From his written work? What does it matter whether he puts his hand up?'

Pearl tells the story again. Eventually Anthony queries, 'But the eleven plus is a written exam. Why does not putting your hand up affect going in for the exam?'

I say, 'Because when you go to enter the eleven plus, even if you pass, they give you an oral. I think I was good at English and I was expected to pass so I had my interview at the Grammar school before I got the results. Or was it afterwards? Maybe there were two interviews. 

After the exam, the headmistress told my mother my maths result was low but the English mark was high and pulled me up, which is very common with girls. Maybe you get offered a conditional place. But if you are too shy to talk, and you don't get given a provisional place, there's no point in taking the exam.'

Anthony is still not convinced. Now neither of us understands the logical leap between Pearl's stories.

Neither does Pearl. But as far as she is concerned, the point of the story is that despite the fact that the school was unhelpful, Pearl and her husband helped their son.

He proved his parents were right to believe in him. The facts are, that they were told that their son Stephen would not succeed, but they got him coached and he took his exams at the Poly and became a professor and a prize-winning author and a great success.

However, we are all still puzzled. I took pictures of us and of old wedding photos to make up This Is Your Life for a big family party when relatives come from abroad later this month.

I was disappointed not to go out for a meal. I had wanted to go to Friends Restaurant in Pinner which has a Michelin star and is our family's favourite but it is closed until Tuesday.

However, Anthony's Granny did not feel up to going out and said several times that she had had a great time, 'I shall tell everybody I had the most wonderful tea party'. She insisted on giving me a couple of the flowers 'because you brought the tea'. And the next day she phoned to thank me.

Here's Pearl - This Is Your Life

Pearl was born September 10th 1916, in the middle of The Great War. It was not known as WWI until WWII.

Pearl thought she was named after her paternal grandmother (shown on the far left of the wedding photo of her mother Sarah Geduld to R I Houtman in 1915). Pearl's grandmother died in 1916 before Pearl was born.

But family records show the grandmother listed with a different name. Pearl shrugs and waves her hand, dismissing my objection: 'It doesn't matter.'

Pearl's sister Daphne was six years younger, so when Pearl was a teenager she had her mother's undivided attention on the day when their dress shop closed for the half day and they went out for tea to a glamorous hotel. They started with gateaux.

Pearl remembers how when she was aged about fourteen, in about 1930, her mother took her shopping in Selfridges, bought a squirrel fur coat, and then said to the assistant, "Do you have one to fit my daughter?"

Pearl was thrilled to receive such a grown-up costume. And to march proudly down the road with her mother in mother-and-daughter outfits.

Pearl's mother had married in WWI. Pearl's wedding took place during the next world war, WWII. The date was March 25, 1940. How did they manage to organize a wedding with rationing going on?

Pearl had an ice cream wedding cake. Her mother ordered it from Cadby Hall. "She knew the manager. She probably served his wife in the shop."

I dutifully write this down. Recording it for posterity. Before my memory can lose the information or change it.I ask her whether Cadby Hall was in London.

'Yes,' she says, 'It's still there.'A moment later she adds, 'They have premises all over England. Cadbury, the chocolate people.'

I query, 'White chocolate, in the cake?''
'Yes.' A second later she says, 'The cake was made by the ice cream people. What's-it's name?'

'Walls?' I speculate. 'Lyons?'

'That was it. Lyons.'

My pen is poised. I pause and I query this. 'I thought you said the cake was made by Cadbury's?'
'Whatever.'

Later, as my son Anthony drives me home, we try to pool our thoughts and sort out the facts, but come to no conclusion.

He shakes his head, 'When I was trained at school and university to interview older people, no-one warned me about this. Nobody ever prepares you for this sort of confusion. You are told to expect that most of the public will tell you the truth - but sometimes they will tell you lies. One or the other.

'But nobody says that perfectly willing and honest interviewees will give you two completely conflicting accounts of events.'

I added, 'Or that they often contradict themselves within the same sentence!'

We don't care. We have hysterics. We share the same sense of humour. The hilarity, the absurdity, of this family trip, or trip up, down memory lane, has been a major part of the day's entertainment.

Angela Lansbury, author.