What Christmas means to me: Peace, love and family

MY earliest memory of Christmas were the songs that were broadcast over Radio Sarawak in 1956 when I was six years old, and had my ears tuned to Grandpa Ong’s huge Telefunken radio set in his living room.

Having attended Primary 1 at St Thomas’ School in Kuching where Mum was an English teacher, I had learned enough English that entire first year to be able to understand what some of the lyrics in the songs were all about.

I recall well that my early initiation to Christmas hymns and carols were ‘Away in a Manger’, ‘The First Noel’ and ‘Silent Night.’

The early singers over the radio had included Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Rosemary Clooney and the Black & White Minstrels. BBC had broadcast the Church of England’s Christmas Service live as well.

By the time I was 10 in 1960, two of my all-time favourite gospel songs had just been released – ‘Take My Hand Precious Lord’ by Elvis Presley, and ‘Oh Holy Night’ by Nat King Cole.

By 1963, during the weeks preceding every Christmas, the season was never complete without having Jim Reeves and Elvis singing in the background. We had bought our own vinyl records by then.

Although from Grandpa Ong downwards we were all staunch practising Buddhists, this fact did not stop us from celebrating the season and festival of Christmas.

My two spinster aunts, Mary and Rosalind, were the earliest proponents and would start the ball rolling in early December by buying a plastic Christmas tree and festive decorations and trinkets, strings of tiny neon lights and brightly coloured strands of tinsels, for us to set up and decorate in Grandpa Ong’s living room.

Grandpa Ong, although stern and held in high regard by the locals – he was the custodian of a number of the Buddhist/Taoist temples in and around Kuching – would just look on with amusement.

Our brightly-lit and heavily-decorated Christmas tree was placed in the living room corner, facing the huge Buddhist shrine with its idols and paraphernalia of worship fronted at the main entrance of Grandpa’s mansion.

Hanging on our plastic tree branches were gift-wrapped presents, with the bigger and heavier ones being placed at the foot of the tree. These would slowly pile up as the days got closer to Dec 25.

Grandpa Ong did not see any conflict between his Buddhist beliefs and our celebration of the Christmas Season. He, together with all his siblings, were a product of an Anglican Mission school – St Thomas’.

Indeed, the English bishops of the day would have been his friends during their time. I remember vividly that Grandpa Ong too had given us presents in the forms of ‘angpows’ (red cash packets) with money inside during Christmas.

I cannot remember with any accuracy exactly when we started the Ong family tradition of roasting a turkey for our Christmas dinner – it was probably between the time I was 10 and 12.

The turkey had probably come from a relative’s cold storage, Tan Sum Guan at Ewe Hai Street, or Joo Chan at India Street, before Ting & Ting started in 1957.

I had sourced my turkey from Ting & Ting’s from 1967 right up to 2018 (the store closed on June 29, 2019) – that’s a total of 51 turkeys over the years!

After 2019, I source it from Mike Ting at The Carvery.

I recall very well that us siblings, during our pre-teen years, had pooled our ‘resources’ (savings of some of our pocket money) to buy Christmas presents every year for each other, our parents and of course our two favourite aunts.

We would be taken to our family’s regular friendly general store, the Tien Chan at Carpenter Street, where we would pass our handwritten list of presents to the ‘uncle’ behind the counter, who would gather all our requests and send us off back home to gift wrap each present individually.

It was such a fun time bonding with the family, young and old!

There was an amusing story during one year when we had listed two packets of ‘Kotex’ (sanitary pads) as presents for our aunts.

As none of us had any idea what they were used for, we had just observed the boxes tucked away in the cupboards of our aunts, and thought they must certainly like them as there was always a constant supply.

You should have seen their faces when they had unwrapped these boxes of sanitary pads that we bought them for Christmas!

We all had a good laugh, although at the time we were not given any answer as to why they found it so hilarious, and neither did we till some years later!

Although we were all taught Scripture in school and all of us had always scored the maximum marks during the tests and exams that we had taken over the years, we were not Christian.

We attended the compulsory church services during the opening and closing ceremonies of the school year; we had during our time the daily morning assemblies as we say ‘Our Lord’s Prayer’, and of course, we had also lived our young lives according to all the precepts as taught in ‘The 10 Commandments’.

Two of my elder uncles, Kee Hui and Kee Chong, were the first to be baptised and confirmed as Anglican Christians rather early on in their lives – in their 40s.

My father Kee Bian was ‘born again’ in the 1980s, in his mid-50s, followed by my mother; my sister Edrea and brothers Edric and Edmund soon followed.

I came to the Lord with my entire family in 1988 when I was 38, at St Faith’s Church in Kenyalang Park, during the Vicarship of the late Archdeacon Michael Lim.

My witness was his son, Reverend Ivor Lim.

Prior to becoming a ‘born-again’ Christian, my knowledge and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ’s teachings and the reason for celebrating Christmas were, at best, ‘superficial’ and based on what I had learned in school.

After attending a ‘Life in the Spirit’ seminar at St Faith’s Church in 1988 and became born in the spirit, it took on a deeper meaning and to this day as my faith deepens, I am forever learning how to become a better Christian in my daily life.

The birth of Jesus Christ and his teachings; reading and understanding and following what the Bible tells us – they have all taken on a whole new world of meaning since then.

A true Christian never ceases his learning.

Today, I am not shy to ‘proclaim the Good News’ nor to share the Word and to evangelise.

During my one-year intensive Bible study and tutelage under the Reverend George Tay and his wife Eunice under their ministry of ‘Discipleship Training’, I had read the Bible from cover to cover; and was proud to have completed the DT intensive course some years back.

Today when I celebrate Christmas with my family and friends, I am celebrating the ‘Good News’ that Jesus Christ is alive and that we have all been saved and await his ‘Second Coming’!

Christmas time is when we reflect upon his birth, share and spread His teachings of love, salvation and hope.

It is also a time for celebration, and for us to remember that we are all His children, that we are all part of a ‘Family of God’; that peace, hope and understanding towards all mankind must always be the guiding light of everything that the Bible teaches us.

We pray for peace, comfort, safety and lesser human suffering, and an end to all major wars and minor conflicts throughout the world.

We pray for a greater tolerance among the religions, the races and the genders, as well as better understanding among the political, societal and economic divisions throughout the First and Third worlds.

Most of all, we pray for the continued stability, prosperity, peace and harmony within our beloved nation of Malaysia, and especially our state of Sarawak.

I wish you all my faithful friends, relatives and readers a ‘Most Blessed Happy Christmas’ and may the New Year bring you all your heart’s desires.

* The opinions expressed in this article are the columnist’s own and do not reflect the view of the newspaper.