For many, the holiday season is a complex ritual. Tucked 359 days after our last good resolution, Christmas promises to be the perfect time for reflection, celebration and gratitude. ’Tis the season to be jolly after all … But is it really?

Christmas lights sparkle across Hong Kong, but this year, my festive spirit is choked with sadness. Less than a month before the celebration, Hong Kong lost hundreds of lives in the Tai Po fire: lives that were young and old, some far from home, others resting at its very heart. With that citywide grief hanging in the season’s air, I’m left wondering how to sit down to a lavish feast when our community bears such a wound. How to look around my own table without seeing, in the empty chairs, all the families that will never be whole again.

“There have been Christmases where my heart was too full of grief to celebrate,” says Hong Kong food designer Alison Tan, better known by her Instagram handle, @sapphireketchup. “It was Christmas right after the genocide began,” she says, referring to 2023 and the Israel-Gaza war. “I couldn’t go into a cheerful Christmas party and pretend everything was OK.” But she realised she couldn’t force her own feelings on others and that “the dinner must go on”.

Tan captures my own struggle: to gather and celebrate from a place of compassion, to recognise the suffering of others and my own privilege without collapsing into useless guilt.

Alison Tan, a multidisciplinary food designer and “experimental feeder”. Photo: Gemma Harrad

Alison Tan, a multidisciplinary food designer and “experimental feeder”. Photo: Gemma Harrad

The past year left a bruise. The world kept burning and flooding, global warming intensified, ignored by politicians locked in ego battles, and we witnessed escalating atrocities across the globe. The Tai Po tragedy brought that unease home for many. And I’m not even getting into all that the Christmas table will inevitably reflect: the year’s personal successes and failures, the state of one’s bank account and family dynamics.