Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the solstice, call it what you like. 'Tis the season to be schmaltzy...
I'M HAVING a Dickens of a festive season. It's that time of year when mental stocktaking rears its troublesome head. Another year, another job, another city. Ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come have been rattling around my brain.
Maybe this has something to do with that Rush song: We are young, wandering the face of the earth, wondering what our dreams might be worth, learning that we're only immortal for a limited time.
My grandmother has one picture of her father. My grandfather had one picture of his mother. Old grainy portraits. Their generation did not have the dozens of small black-and-white pictures that my mother has of her childhood.
Technology is making it much easier for us to remember.
My Ghost of Christmas Past appeared in the form of some 8mm home movies which have been lying around for ages.
I finally remembered to take these in to a photo lab where they were transferred to video tape which we watched tonight.
There I am, all of two years old, riding in my grandfather's 1948 Chevrolet.
My father looks like my baby brother. My grandparents still have black hair. Dead friends and family walk among us.
The lack of sound only makes it all seem more real. They are real. They never went away.
How do we decide which memories should be kept? Or discarded? After all, all cells in our bodies are replaced every seven years.
There are some memories of this year I would rather lose. My Ghost of Christmas Present kicks in. It's July. I'm standing in the departure lounge at Heathrow. The cellphone rings. My friends have been mangled in a car crash.
And the melatonin cannot stop my memories on the flight back home through the night. I see a bubbly young child in Oxford. I see a beautiful young woman walking the beach in Trafalgar. The stewardess wakes me. "It's just a dream," I say, blinking back the tears.
Maybe that's why we dream. Maybe we have a re-recording process where memories are transferred from old brain cells to new ones? And during this time, some memories are left behind?
My grandfather's generation was able to grow old gracefully. There is no evidence left behind of soiled bottoms, skinned knees, pimpled teenage insecurity, strangely designed clothes and outrageous haircuts.
My generation has boxes upon boxes of photographs; large glossy colour prints that do not fade; moments stolen from time. This allows my daughter Aura to point out: "That's you, Kanthan. You look funny, hey?"
In reply, I give an eerie spine-tingling chuckle, for I am the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
Armed with my trusty video camera, every embarrassing aspect of Aura's three-and-a-half years of existence has been captured for posterity in full and glorious colour and hi-fi stereo sound.
That particularly devastating nappy change? It's there! The 15-minute tantrum at Crocworld? On tape! Feeding her nose at the birthday party? Wouldn't have missed it! First school concert? Blackmail material!
I stand back and wonder whether this is a good thing?
Perhaps unfettered access to the past will lead to our spending our lives reliving the past?
The flipside is the opportunity to speak across generations. Aura will be able to introduce her great-grandmother to her own grandchildren. She will be better able to draw upon the best memories of her own childhood.
She may even decide that she still likes me.
Merry Christmas. And let's be careful out there.