Come Christmas and the floodgates of childhood memories swing open effortlessly. Those freezing December mornings in Munnar in the fifties would find us children peering through the dew-drenched window-panes at the frost on the lawn. Then, unseen by Mum, we would sneak out to spoon the glistening crystals into teacups in the futile hope they would harden into ice. They never did, and all we got for our pains were runny noses and painfully chapped lips.Nothing builds bonhomie better than a bonfire. In those wintry evenings we would huddle around one, munching groundnuts — the day’s feuds and fisticuffs forgotten as plans were made for the morrow. Sometimes our spaniel Rover, too, would jostle for a bit of warmth.On Christmas morning, excitement would run high as we unwrapped our gifts bulging invitingly in the limp stockings we had hung up the previous night. Soon we would be flaunting them before our friends. Once a pal cheerfully confided that his Dad had given him a drum, a harmonica and a bugle for Xmas — and also a whack for playing them before 5 am!The Christmas tree — our collective handiwork of which we were inordinately proud — would be sparkling in all its splendour when the dhobi, barber and woodcutter, dressed in their best, turned up for their customary baksheesh, preceded by a piece of cake and a glass of brandy that would be drained bashfully but effortlessly!After a lavish lunch — Mum’s pride, over which Dad presided — came the day’s highlight: Uncle Ernest would rev up his motorcycle and ferry us children, one by one, around the tea estate, his neck-tie whipping us in the face as he accelerated — fuelled no doubt by his generous pre-lunch pegs. It was a roller-coaster ride made all the more enjoyable by the undisguised envy of our friends as we roared past them, hair flying wildly!Christmas evening would find the elders jovially reminiscing over their sundowners with a fire crackling in the hearth and carols playing softly in the background, courtesy Radio Ceylon. The feeling was truly euphoric. “Those were the days, my friend! We thought they’d never end!” ran an old hit song. But, sadly, end they did.
