Khon Kaen Christmas

Most people would agree that it’s nice to be all warm and toasty in the middle of winter, but usually that vision involves snuggling, sweaters, and a significant difference in temperature between inside and the out-of-doors. This Christmas certainly was hot, but it had more to do with the sizzling sun than a crackling fire. This November brought temperatures so balmy that I occasionally found myself donning a light jacket in the evenings, but the past few weeks have been back to sweltering with daily highs in the mid-nineties. Luckily, this type of weather necessitates turning the a/c down to frigid; fostering a certain kindred feeling (at least in my mind) with those of you suffering through what I hear is a pretty serious winter back home.

It’s not only been the weather that’s a change for me from last year. Since less than 1% of Thailand’s population is Christian, there’s not a lot of hoopla here celebrating the birth of Jesus. Actually, I’m fairly certain that most Thai people don’t think the holiday has anything to do with Jesus, but they do understand Santa Claus since he visits all the children of the world. I did make it a point not to mention to any of the small Thai children I know the fact than in other countries children don’t have to go to school on Christmas and Santa brings you more than a handful of candy.

Come to think of it, there was a certain similarity this year between the events surrounding the coming of the Messiah and last weekend in Thailand. Just as Mary and Joseph were returning to their birthplace for the census, Thai people completed a pilgrimage of sorts to their own hometowns to vote in Sunday’s election. However, I’m not sure they were under the same kind of divine guidance since they voted back the same party that was coup’d out at the end of 2005.

There was also some visual splendor in KK, several organizations did put up lights, but they are more to celebrate the New Year, and a few foreign-owned franchises had trees, but nothing on the scale of what you might see in your average US town. The Sofitel even had a papier-mâché Santa, even if he was being led by a water buffalo. Mara and Joe made a small effort at our house with one lonely strand of lights on the stairs and a small hanging tree-like decoration that we put our presents under.

Luckily, the yuletide gods were smiling on us in one way this year because this week is midterms at KKU, and university policy forbids foreigners from proctoring exams, which means we don’t have to be at school. This is a great improvement for Joe from last year when midterms were the week before Christmas, and everyone returned to work on the 25^th. This year we go back on January 2^nd, Joe’s birthday.

In search of a greater dose of holiday splendor, we jumped town early on Friday, bussed south to Bangkok and landed in a room near the consumer pantheon of Paragon Mall where we could oooh and aahhh at almost as many festive decorations as one could hope to find anywhere in Asia. After our fill of big screen English language movies, bagels, and book shopping, we headed back to Khon Kaen just in time for Christmas. Although peppermint mochas at Starbucks with Joe was not quite the same as dinner with all twenty-some members of my family, all in all we had a lovely holiday.