Lights! Turkey! SpongeBob!

We’ve got a lot to celebrate this week: Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, festivals of light, family, and food.  So SpongeBob and I wish you the best of the season!

SpongeBob, I hear you ask?

You see, I was unaware of SpongeBob’s significance to the holiday season until I went to Singapore, which was already decked out for the holidays in the middle of November.  There was Santa in his sleigh, there was snow, there were reindeer.  To my Western eyes this seemed incongruous in the blast-furnace equatorial heat, but the Singaporeans, many of whom have never seen actual snow in their lives, don’t seem to notice any incongruity.

But wheresoever there was Santa, was there also SpongeBob.

Here you see the display at the Changi airport (motto: “We named our airport after an infamous concentration camp!”), with Santa’s log cabin and its snowy eaves, and behind it SpongeBob waving from his, um . . .  giant underwater pineapple?  I can’t really tell.

The display features sleigh rides, a bouncy castle (“Krusty Krab Pit”), topiary in the form of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and other holiday delights.

Let us therefore be merry!  And light our candles!  And eat vast quantities!  And maybe, remembering SpongeBob waving from his underwater lair, have a little pineapple.