Thai Days of Christmas

Thai Days of Christmas

I had expected this to be a short post – Thailand is a Buddhist country, Christmas isn’t a public holiday –how much could there be to write about? Read on.

December 24 was a teaching day.  I wore the fuzzy reindeer antlers that came along with the Christmas candy and cookies sent by my daughter, Airen, and taught my five classes a little about Christmas Eve, the hanging of Christmas stockings, and family dinners on Christmas Day. Each student got a peppermint candy cane. The rest of the candy was for the Christmas program on the 26^th.

 December 25 was Scout Day.  I had been drafted to help my co-teacher with his “station” – there were 5 or 6 stations to be completed during the day, with activities related to nature and the outdoors, as you would expect. Our station, however, was billed as “ASEAN Languages” and consisted of trying to teach 12 groups of Scouts in turn how to say hello in 10 different countries. Cynic that I am, I suspected that this station was created to give English teachers something to do on Scout Day.

But I’m getting ahead of the story.  Before setting out for stations, Scouts and teachers lined up, milled around, and shivered (we were in the throes of a cold snap, with temperatures in the 60s – very unusual here) while waiting for opening ceremonies. Only the 8^th grade Scouts were present; the others were at Scout camps, where they spent the night. Here is one of my colleagues in his Scout uniform.

 After flag-raising, the first stop was this tunnel made of branches.

 Each Scout had to crawl through the tunnel – presumably meant to simulate crawling through underbrush to escape danger in the forest? As you can see, the tunnel is low enough that students had to crawl through on their bellies. While they were in the tunnel, older students and a couple of teachers shook the branches, poured water over the tunnel, beat on it with sticks and poked sticks through. Needless to say, those who went through early on emerged much less wet and dirty than those who went later.  Watching the girls who were last in line go into the tunnel one by one, I thought about their mothers, who would have to try to get those white socks clean again.

After the tunnel activity, my colleague and I set out for our station a quarter-mile or so outside the village.  He told me that all pratom (elementary) students in grades 4, 5 and 6 and mattayom students in grades 7, 8, and 9 must participate in Scouts and aren’t allowed to continue in mattayom (=high school) unless they achieve all their Scout learning goals at the end of 9^th grade. Doing a little research later, I learned that while Scouting is required in Thai schools, students at some schools can choose other options, such as the Red Cross. However, in our village, other options aren’t available.  I also learned that Scouting was founded in Thailand in 1911 by King Rama VI, that Thailand was a charter member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement in 1922 and the third country in the world to take up Scouting. Who knew?

We were finished at our station by mid-afternoon, when the last groups of Scouts straggled out of the woods or across the field, many of them caked with mud.  They tried gamely to learn the 10 greetings, which they no doubt forgot again before the day was over – just as I did.  On the way back to the village, my colleague talked about how much he had enjoyed Scouts as a boy, and expressed pleasure in seeing our students in good spirits at the end of their day.

So that was Christmas Day.  December 26 was a teaching day that began with a Christmas program outdoors, on the court where we gather each day for flagpole. I had been asked to talk about Christmas and prepare quiz questions, with prizes (candy and cookies from my stash) to the teams who gave correct answers. We set up a table with a small artificial Christmas tree surrounded by bowls and boxes of candy and cookies. The chubby student whom my colleague had persuaded to wear a Santa Claus suit was a real trooper, steadfastly guarding the candy and patiently standing the Christmas tree up again each time it tipped over, approximately every two minutes.

The program wobbled to a start about 20 minutes late – which is almost on time by local standards. Using large flash cards of Christmas scenes, I was trying to teach the students to say “Christmas tree,” “Christmas stocking,” “Merry Christmas” and so on, when the microphone quit working.  Things quickly unraveled after that.  A teacher took the microphone to try to fix it, but returned a half-hour later with the message “No microphone.” Meanwhile, students couldn’t hear what we were saying, so they chatted among themselves and started edging toward the candy. To distract them, one colleague launched an impromptu game of Simon Says, then for reasons known only to him, taught a small group of students to count to ten in Japanese.

Eventually someone brought a different microphone that sort of worked, so I tried to finish telling about Christmas and organize teams for quiz questions (“How many reindeer does Santa have?” “When does Santa bring presents for children?”), but by this time the students, who had been waiting too long for their candy, were out of patience – and who can blame them.  After giving out a few bags of cookies to teams that did manage to answer a quiz question, we resorted to distributing treats at random and hoping that everybody got some. Thankfully, quite a lot of students were still not back from Scout camp or the chaos would have been greater.  –- In the confusion, I couldn’t take pictures, so I leave this event to your imagination.

Note to Self: Remember, technology can and will fail.  Next year, have a back-up plan.

At some point on 12/26, Airen and I met virtually to open presents together.

The first class day in the new school year brought one more Christmas-like event. New Year's gift exchanges are a long-standing Thai tradition, one that I knew nothing about before coming here.  At our school, students exchange gifts in their homerooms.  Each student brings a present (there is a price limit to keep it more affordable), resulting in a stack like this:

My co-teacher set the exchange in motion by drawing the name of a student to hand over the first gift. As you can see, she was instructed to give the first one to me.

 

 The box contained little packages of snacks, which I tossed to the children.  

 

Then the girl who had handed me the present drew a number, and the student with that number gave her the gift he had brought.  As each student handed over their present, they had to say "Happy New Year" – which was harder than you might think for a few of them. The process was repeated until all the gifts had been given.

 

 As you can see, we’re all wearing jackets or sweatshirts -- the cold snap was still on.  The buildings aren't heated (normally there would be no need for heat, or at least not more than a couple of days a year) – but this cold snap lasted for a full three weeks, much to the dismay of the Thais, accustomed as they are to being too hot – but not to being cold. At our school, New Year’s gifts are exchanged not only by students but also among the teachers, at a special meeting called by the principal. I’ll spare you my pictures of that event.

So there you have my Thai Days of Christmas. In Bangkok and other larger cities with many foreign residents, Christmas is much in evidence during December. Shopping mall checkout employees wear Santa Claus hats. Media advertising features Christmas trees, holly, and gift recommendations. Piped music plays Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But local priorities dominate upcountry, as northern and northeastern Thailand are called.