It’s the 31st October … Halloween … and the scariest thing I’ve seen is Singapore gearing itself up for Christmas.
The picture above is of a market that is being specifically set up to flog tinsel, trees, lights and soddin’ baubles to all and sundry.
You see, whereas in the West we buy our Christmas pressies at 4:37pm on the 24th December … in Singapore they start early, early early … mainly for 2 reasons …
1. All you can do here is eat and shop … so Christmas signifies a legitimate reason to go out and spend more of your hard earned cash on even greater levels of useless tat.
2. Singaporeans love nothing more than a bargain [they’ll buy something they don’t want if it is at a cheaper-than-normal price] so October means some real Christmas bargains are to be had.
The thing that I find particularly interesting is that even though this country is basically on the equator line … meaning it is permanently hot and sticky … the Christmas decorations they sell still feature the cliché winter wonderland of the Western World.
It’s the same in Australia and NZ … which poses the question … do they do this because they were/are once part of the British Commonwealth, and this makes them feel ‘closer’ to the ‘motherland’ in some way?
I have no idea if this is the reason [I mean, it could also be because companies like Hallmark have forced the World to adopt this view of Christmas because it provides them with ‘economies of scale’ in their business] but it would be interesting to see if this is more prevalent in countries that were once part of the British Commonwealth versus those that have ruled themselves independently.