There I was, peacefully enjoying my Saturday morning coffee when my eyes landed on the Chinese New Year decorations still stubbornly clinging to my house.
Fu characters beamed at me from every corner like overenthusiastic party guests who refused to leave. The auspicious calligraphy scrolls– those poetic declarations of “Heart think, thing becomes” and “Dragon horse sperm god”– were still hanging around like motivational speakers lingering in an empty seminar room long after everyone had gone home. Soon they’ll be sentenced to storage room solitary confinement, where they’ll spend the year pondering why my “heart think” hasn’t managed to “millionaire becomes me” yet. Clearly, I’m not thinking hard enough.
Here in Malaysia, we’ve turned festive decorating into an Olympic event. With so many celebrations to juggle, we’ve had to build giant gleaming megamalls just to display the ever-rotating spectacle of seasonal decor. This is because marketers have mastered the fine art of perpetual festivity, seamlessly swapping out decorations to remind us that we absolutely need a new 80-inch TV to truly honor whatever festival is next on the calendar.
This got me pondering a deep existential question: when, exactly, does festive decoration cross the line from joyous celebration to obvious procrastination?
And so, today, I finally give in to the march of time. Down came the red trinkets, now looking decidedly less festive. The plastic cherry blossoms joined the exodus, along with the red cloth that had been valiantly guarding our main door against the invasion of non-festive spirits.
Since I was on such a roll with my decoration purge, I figured I might as well tackle the Christmas tree too. Yes, that Christmas tree. The one that had been standing in my living room since December, silently pretending to be a mandarin orange plant whenever visitors came over a couple of weeks ago.