Our most memorable Christmases
You better not cry, you better not pout. Hopefully Santa is still coming, even if he knows a bunch of bankers have been really bad this year. If the economy is bringing you down, maybe some of these odd, unusual and wacky holiday tales from local personalities will give you some holiday cheer.
Natale (Italian for Christmas) is always a special occasion, but it is at its best for a child. I am a native of Rome so my neighbour literally was the Pope. Being good Catholics, we attended all the Natale events in our church. Every year the garbage company (as a tradition for many years) would build up a fantastic nativity set called presepe. It was always the best presepe in Rome, I would say. I never knew whether the nativity set was made out of recycled garbage or not, but it always looked beautiful. So every year the Pope would visit that place, which is in the back of the garbage depot. The Pope would bless all the people and the workers. I remember one time, I was maybe eight, I was standing in the front line in this big crowd of people. Suddenly the Pope sat down on his knees and asked me my name and age. I answered with a really shy little voice and then he touched my head and gave me his blessing. I didn't want to wash my hair for a few days because I didn't want to lose that special blessing. My mum got very upset because of that, so I gave up and took a bath. Buon Natale.
Paolo Monti, executive chef of Gaia
Christmas Eve should be a real silent night to spend quietly at home with family or just a few close friends. That's something I haven't been able to do for many years because of work. My ideal Christmas would be to spend some time with a few close friends, a few bottles of wine, eating a big turkey beside a real fireplace. I can't do that in Hong Kong because I don't have a real fireplace.
Louis Koo Tin-lok, actor
My parents used to spend the end of the year in the south of Spain. The weather was warmer and the festive season relaxed and fun. But they used to mock me, saying the moment I touched down at the airport the weather turned. One year, again, it started to rain and the temperature dropped within a day of my arrival. The house was lovely though; magnificent view, cosy, and luckily we had heaters to keep us warm. A couple of days before Christmas though, all of a sudden, no more water - although it was raining so water was everywhere. At least we could still cook and were warm, but no showers, just a bucket with a washcloth. Toilet? A couple of days with no water and you realise the genius of the inventor of the flush. Finally, Christmas Eve came around and we had a lovely meal, candles and were laughing about the water shortage and miserable weather, when all of a sudden, a big bang and the lights went out. The storm knocked over an electricity post. No light, no heater, no telephone (apart from our mobile phones with low batteries). That night, for a few hours, we had the most romantic Christmas Eve - candlelight everywhere, covered in blankets and sharing a good laugh. Anouk Hatzakorzian Chrun, managing director of Essential Notion International
One Christmas when I was about seven, my mother took me to the supermarket to help choose the ingredients for our family's holiday feast. We picked out all the usual things: turkey, Stove Top Stuffing, mashed potatoes, and an apple crisp for dessert. The checkout assistant helped us load everything into the car, but when we got home, the turkey was nowhere to be found. We figured it must have been left at the register, but when we went back to the store, alas, no turkey. The manager saw that we had paid for it on our receipt, so he gave us a new bird and we went on with the cooking and festivities. A few months later, the springtime sun was finally making an appearance and we started smelling this strange smell in the car. We had it washed, checked under the seats, and even got the air vents looked at in case something had fallen inside, but it was clean as a whistle except for this pungent scent. Finally, a few weeks later, when we were at the gas station getting the car checked out, the attendant found the root of the car's irrepressibly foul odour - our Christmas turkey, completely covered in green mould and stuck in the trunk underneath the spare tyre.
Kelly Berlin, co-founder of internet portal Dim Sum & Then Some
I'm very fortunate that Christmas has always been a happy time for me, surrounded by family. However, I do recall a funny incident, one year in Thailand, when our children were quite young. My husband Robert and I had rented a beach house in the popular holiday spot of Pattaya. In those days, the only place you could buy a turkey was from a military retail store, and we bought an enormous Butterball turkey for our Christmas meal. On arriving at the beach house on Christmas Eve, we discovered the home only had a teeny-weeny oven, so we had to cut the bird up into four pieces and proceeded to walk along the beach, knocking on the doors of neighbours who we hoped were equipped with bigger ovens. Fortunately, each of them helped to cook a quarter of our giant turkey. Our Christmas meal might have been cooked in four different ovens, but it resulted in one memorable meal. Since that time, I've always made a point of buying a sensible-sized turkey.
Sally Lo, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Cancer Fund
