Singapore - It's Halloween - Merry Christmas

In what has become a tasteless but predictable ritual in Singapore, the Christmas decorations are up before Halloween. I wandered into a department store on Saturday and was assaulted by Jingle Bells blaring from the muzak system.

One suffers a fair degree of cognitive dissonance when hearing "dashing through the snow" while it is 32 degrees Celsius and the humidity is at 92%, but this is magnified by the sheer bad taste of the decorations.

I bet you didn't know that Christmas is brought to you by a major Japanese consumer goods manufacturer. Well it is in Singapore - there are signs every 25 feet trumpeting the fact.

With all the sensitivity to race and religion here, it is amazing that a religious holiday can be so thoroughly hi-jacked by commercial interests without a peep from the supposed adherents.

Singapore