In 1987, when I worked the Jebel
Ali Hotel
in Dubai, I had
to work on Christmas Day. I'd asked
about a December vacation but at one of our busiest times, it was out of
the question.
I've read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol every December since I was 10 and that first
Dubai December, I read it at lunch-time sitting on the beach -- a bit odd being
in full secretarial garb among the swim-suited German holiday-makers but I
tried not to let it bother me. When
sadness overwhelmed me or I missed my family, which was often in those days, I
shed a few self-pitying tears before pulling myself together. Life goes on, right?
But I did resent working on Christmas Day. I became a "squeezing, wrenching,
grasping, scraping, clutching covetous old sinner" myself, especially when
I saw that although the hotel was packed with international tourists and Dubai
expatriates who did get the day off,
there was no reason for me to be in my office.
Nothing needed to be done in my office that day. Oh, I could have
done some typing or caught up on filing but the phone didn't ring, no one
visited, nothing had to be done that couldn't wait until the next day. I paced around the lobby, scowling at folks
enjoying their Christmas day, whining about my hard luck. "Humbug!" I mumbled to no one in
particular, "Humbug!" Of course, it wasn't fair for one person to be off when every
other staff member was on overload but that didn't occur to me until quite late in the day. In
retrospect, I was a thirty year-old of
breath-taking immaturity.
I should tell you here that the conventional Victorian Christmas was alive and well in Dubai, celebrated in hotels such as the Jebel Ali; and
while most European Christian expats living on the banks of the Persian Gulf observed the season in their apartments or
villas, many of them took advantage of holiday merriment at their favorite
hotel.
The Jebel
Ali Hotel
was famous for its Christmas display.
Oh, how hard the staff worked to make it perfect for the guests! In the lobby, there was a life-size replica of Santa’s sleigh suspended
precariously above the vast expanse of marble floor. There were Norwegian
spruces with blinking lights surrounded by fake snow. Chef Lee and his patisserie team build a
gingerbread house just like the one I pictured in Hansel and Gretel; its scent
permeated the entire place. I recall
carolers dressed in full Victorian costume singing about “the bleak mid-winter”
with sweat dripping down their faces on to their woolen scarves and mittens...or
did I dream that? At the same time, outside the hotel, through the back
windows, you could see youngsters splashing about in the swimming pool; their
parents sipping pina coladas with colorful umbrellas at the swim-up bar;
half-naked sunbathers in loungers coating themselves with sun-oil while palm
trees swayed in the warm breezes of the Arabian sea. Every now and then, the two worlds would
collide as sun-burned, sand-coated children with plastic swim-rings around
their middles and stripy towels around their necks wandered through the
snow-covered lobby to get roasted chestnuts.
Or as red-suited Santa himself -- the English sales manager, if I
remember correctly -- sack in hand, sweat streaming down his face, would walk
across the beach volleyball courts calling, “Ho-ho-ho!”
I've often wondered: did anyone catch the irony that Jesus was more
likely born in the simple sandy world outside the window with the heat and the
date palms than he was in the air-conditioned indoor world of hot chocolate;
roaring fires and ornamented fir trees?
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| "Humbug!" Christmas Day 1987, Jebel Ali Hotel |
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