Sunday, December 2, 2007

Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas?

There are so many Christmas decorations up around here it is amazing. I mean, they waited until December, so that is nice, but 74 percent of the population here is Buddhist. Eighteen percent are Hindus, seven percent are Muslims and Christians fit into that other category for the remaining one percent. I wasn't really prepared to be bombarded by Christmas.

I guess the call of incredible year-end sales was too strong for the merchants to ignore this holiday for lack of religious connection. The government does recognize Christmas as an official holiday and we get it off from work (which again, leads me to question why Deepavali is not a holiday?).

So I thought I'd share a cup a coffee with you as you prepare for the holidays. I'm basically done. With no need to decorate and with a very limited budget, I've been able to finish my Christmas shopping early this year. That is good because I imagine as it gets closer to my departure date I'll be a little less calm.

2 comments:

Jen K said...

The merchant pull is too great everywhere... There were Christmas decorations up the day Halloween ended here. Nasty, really.

But now it's December and I'm on the holiday wagon again. :) Hey...did you ever try my maple bread pudding? It's very simple. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey, stumbled on your blog randomly. I've been clicking fascinatedly and following the last few entries. Being a Sri Lankan - I feel somewhat qualified to comment about Deepavali.

Deepavali _was_ a holiday in the 80s and 90s. Sri Lanka had a lot more holidays back then. Somewhere in the late 90s or early 00s, the government of the time decided to trim things down a bit after years of protestations from companies about worker productivity.

Deepavali and a couple of other holidays (Id-Ul-Fitr, I think) got removed from the list and made "opt-in", ie:, you can ask for the day off if you celebrate the festival.