Making New Traditions

Many expats find celebrating Christmas far from family a bit of a challenge. The secret is adding a few new traditions to your holiday repertoire!

- Melinda Murphy

“I love making Christmas magical for my children,” says Linda Shearer with a glow. “Even now that my three daughters are a bit older, it’s still magical for them – full of so many memories. But the way we make memories in Singapore has had to change a bit from the way we did things back in the UK.”

Adding to what they have

For starters, there’s the tree. Back in their home outside of London, they always bought a real tree. Here? The ceiling in their black-and-white house is very high, so a real tree would have felt a bit dinky. That’s why, in their first year here, they bought a 15-foot-tall fake tree at Kinex Mall.

“I really do miss the real tree. We even had a bit of tradition about it. The girls and their dad would head off around the first of December and come back with the tree. I’d always have a moan saying it’s not big enough, not bushy enough. Then, by the time we decorated it, I’d say the tree wasn’t too bad after all.” Linda laughs, saying she even felt the giant fake tree was too small at first, until they decorated it.

Linda brought most of the decorations from home. She has lots of them, too, because every year on the first of December, she gives her girls a tree gift – a special ornament. Look closely at the tree, and you can find sets of three of the same decorations throughout. And since her daughters are older now (India is 18, Imogen 16, and Iris 14), there are plenty of years of tree gifts to decorate the fir, the majority brought with them from London. All the ornaments have memories and the girls know the story of each. Linda’s hope is that they will eventually take their ornaments with them and pass them down to their own children one day.