Wednesday, November 18, 2009

It is Starting to Look Like Christmas......

When we moved to Phuket ten years ago the Western style of Christian decorating was very minimal. Most people who came to vacation at Christmas were happily escaping the cold and the hub bub and commercialization of a Western Christmas.
Thailand is basically  a Buddhist country so Christmas Day was like any other day of the week here. In fact, our first Christmas here we had no kitchen and had to put the workmen off  from working through Christmas day. Things of course have changed over the years and Thai's generally love the idea of any kind of festival so we now have Christmas and New Years along with  Chinese New Year and then finally  winding up with Thai New Year which is called Songkran. This is a week long celebration most akin to our Christmas, as most everyone heads home to the country to family. This list of holidays means we are pretty well celebrating from now till April with decorating of some sort or another!

The Thai's traditional fancy dress and their love of gold may give a little indication of why they enjoy
adopting some of our Western celebrations.  Below is darling daughter number 3 dressed as the Queen of Loi Kratong, there seems to be a resemblance in style to our Christmas tree 'dressing' of the same era.  The tree design, and parcel wrapping in this picture has a strong resemblance in colour scheme to the up coming Chinese New Year! Globalization?















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