Singapore's Winter Wonderland

Raise your hands if you like Christmas.  Good, now raise your hands if you like Christmas in October.  Just a guess, but your hands are down, right?  Welcome to Singapore:  A Winter Wonderland ALL YEAR LONG.  We're in the consumer capital of the world, so Christmas is #1 on the list of things to celebrate--Christmas With Visa.  That's the theme this year.  Okay, it's not really the theme, but it's one of them.  "Christmas All Decked Out," is the theme, and here's what it means.

Now let me take you on a tour of Christmas in Singapore.  The streets are lined with hanging lights and all symbols of secular Christmas... the shopping malls start constructing their decorations in October.  I kid you not, October.  BEFORE Halloween.  The decorations are a bit out there, some of them I can't explain.  I stopped asking questions a long time ago... but take a look at a few of the crazier ones...

TANGLIN MALL

Can anyone explain why there's an airplane attached to the Christmas tree?

Notice, it's Snowing!  No, that's not real snow, it's not even fake snow.  It's soap.  Yes, there is a giant soap dispenser that dispenses foam-soap at 7pm and 8:30pm every night outside the Starbucks, so little kids can come and play in the soap in their tank tops...have soap-ball fights and really gear up for the holidays.  Ahh, the joys of Christmas.

ORCHARD ROAD

Then we take a walk down Orchard Road.  The shopping mecca.  These lights, too, have been up and lit every night since the end of October, and it just makes you wonder how expensive IS Singapore's electricity bill?!

My personal favorite touch are the slutty reindeer.  For a place that has such strict pornography and censorship laws, I find it amusing to see how these reindeer are dressed!  I guess sex sells.  Whatever it takes to get the shoppers whipping out their credit cards, right?

I got a little obsessed with taking pictures of other people taking pictures of the Christmas decorations.  It blows my mind how many people have flocked out to Orchard Road and are taking photo after photo with themselves and the decorations.  I was interested in the subjects, but by being so, I have become the subject myself.

ORCHARD ION

This is the mall to end all malls.  I'd like to say it recently opened (opened in September), but in Singapore terms, that's not recent (at least four new malls have opened since then), and this mall is the epitome of Singapore.  First of all, it's architecture is said to evoke sustainability.  Now, let me be perfectly clear:  there is nothing sustainable about this building, it doesn't have sustainable functions, it has the appearance of sustainability.  The design is supposed to conjure up images of tree branches and leaves, and there's a statue of a date outside.  Yes, a date.  The fruit.  It makes absolutely no sense, but, it's built with images of nature in mind.  Hmm.

 

AND A FEW MORE THINGS FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT VALUE...photo credit by Antoinette Mullins