Features

The Copper Tumbler & Donkeys in Mannar: A Work of Mourning – II

Published

2 years ago

2023/07/21

By Laleen Jayamanne

(First part of this article appeared in The Island Midweek Review on 12 July 2023)
‘it is not narrative that we should abandon but chronology’’ Kumar Shahani

Matter and Memory: Copper and Fire

The image of the copper tumbler on fire in the microwave oven is shocking and dangerous because of the proximity to electricity. But beyond that visceral shock, the image itself feels like the burning heart of this quiet film. This image on fire, in the hum-drum space of the kitchen, is an accident. The film doesn’t tell us who put it in there but we can guess. The tumbler itself is also emotionally supercharged. We learn that lots of stuff has happened to that copper tumbler, it has a mini-history.

The old mother, Daisy Teacher, was entrusted with a set of special copper tumblers and other personal items for safekeeping by her friend and colleague, Fatima Teacher, before the latter was evicted from her home in Mannar, along with a host of other Muslims. Clearly, she expected to return soon. Daisy Teacher’s son Jude who questioned the LTTE about this expulsion disappears at the same time and in her grief his mother collapses the two events, blaming her friend. She gets rid of the set of tumblers and all of the valuables left with her in trust. She has gone past understanding that like her son, Fatima Teacher is also a victim of LTTE violence, not the cause of it.

Quite by chance a single tumbler survives Daisy Teacher’s effort to get rid of the set. The surviving tumbler opens up a wound barely healed and also potential. Several Lankan and other critics have appreciated that the violence of the war is not represented in the film, but instead emerges in recollections. The single tumbler is a special copper cup, invested with the values of friendship between two professional women, the Tamil Daisy Teacher who taught English and the Muslim Fatima Teacher who taught Biology. Daisy Teacher flings the tumbler on the floor yelling at the maid for having served her tea in it when she had been ordered never to do so. Soon after as a result, the repressed past (at once personal and historical in scale), erupts irresistibly into the present.

Potentiality as an idea can be treated in two ways. As an Aristotelian scientific category, it is about strict cause and effect. It’s a latent possibility in an actuality – for example, a seed is a potential tree. The seed can only become that species of tree and no other. Change here is predictable and rationally understandable by science.

Now, the image of the tumbler on fire does not have a potential in this sense, its outcomes are indeterminate. It creates a breach within the hum-drum everyday normality. It opens up an old wound and raw pain manifests as shock and anger. But the sound and image of a copper tumbler of hot tea, first flung on the floor by Daisy Teacher, then catching fire in a microwave oven, and then subject to discussion, harbours historical memory.

If we allow the sense of utter urgency of the ‘mad’ old mother to rattle us, and we linger there, the sparks will fire our imagination. Then we might recall that there are similarly singular, disturbing fire-powered images in Sumathy’s two previous films also. I am thinking of the white car set ablaze by a Sinhala racist nationalist mob, with the film director K. Venkat trapped within it and his muffled mournful cries as he is burned to death, in Sons and Fathers. Then there is the burning tea bush in Ingirunthu, with Peter seated beside it playing his accordion in the dead of night, for example. But in their repetition, these fiery images do very different things, never the same.

So, the copper tumbler on fire in the microwave, in the kitchen, is not a Symbol, nor a Metaphor, or an Allegory. A symbol, like for example the blindfolded figure holding the scales of justice signifies that The Law is unbiased, objective, and rationally balanced. A metaphor, according to the very etymology of the word, converts one thing into something else without residue, unlike a simile, as in ‘Juliet is the sun,’ pure radiance. As for allegory, it has a bad name because it is arbitrary, unlike symbol and metaphor.

So, there can be ‘a tea bush on fire’ in Sumathy’s Ingirunthu which does not turn to ashes. The relationship between the tea bush and fire is ‘arbitrary’ which is what allegory does, it stops time, so we can read the image. You can’t say for example, that the tea bush is fire, there is no intelligible connection between the two. Their relationship is arbitrary but an imaginative director may help us perceive a sensuous abstraction, creating an allegorical connection, rather than a dry abstract juxtaposition.

What critical move can we then make (having eliminated the main rhetorical figures we critics reach for, filed neatly in our brains), when we are lost for words in the face of such a singular image as a copper tumbler ablaze? There is, I think, a challenge, a critical imperative and an intellectual impulse too, to keep going back to it to see and hear it and think of its materiality and its immaterial powers of connectivity (sparks) with the rest of the film – its filmic provenance, so to speak.

We can register its unusual materiality; it’s a copper cup, not a base metal like tin of which most tumblers (belek coppa) are made. Who makes tumblers in copper one wonders and learn from Daisy Teacher’s rambling, crazy but partly lucid monologue that, ‘it’s of very good quality (using English), they don’t make them like that anymore’. It is believed that the ancient Mantai port, the main one for Anuradhapura, once even exported Seruwila copper to India. So, it’s very likely that a tradition of making those copper cups was alive in the country, alluded to by Daisy Teacher.

Copper is a precious civilizational metal, one of the oldest materials to be crafted by humans, providing also the material for the iconic bronze sculpture of Lanka across Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as Modernist and Contemporary abstract sculpture. So, a pure copper tumbler is part of a formidable Lankan lineage (though humbly domestic).

It sanctifies the friendship, trust and professional loyalty shared by Daisy Teacher and Fatima Teacher. That copper tumbler, in what poets call its ‘thisness,’ in its facticity, in its material links to history, is a Bazinean ‘fact-image,’ in both its use value and iconic value. It stirs one’s faculty of memory, opening up Epic-Memory, connecting an intimate female friendship with historical civilizational memory of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious polity, which includes trade and migration too. Those, as I see and understand, are some of the potential of the burning copper tumbler.

* * * *

The penultimate sequence in The Single Tumbler is of Old Daisy Teacher, dressed in a lime green sari with a dark blue-green blouse, leaving her house, shuffling along the main road, alone, with a dazed and distressed expression (captured in a profile tracking mid-shot, framed against trees), carrying that dented burnt copper tumbler, hoping to return it to her friend.

Even in her madness her ethical sensibility has re-emerged in her futile quest. She passes two donkeys at a crossroad when the camera leaves them behind, gathering speed on one of Sumathy’s favourite tracking shots taken from Lalitha’s car taking her to the airport, leaving behind Mannar town with its large Christian cemetery and church, crossing the causeway with its water landscape vistas as music strikes up.

Instead of ending there, quite unexpectedly, we are taken back to the family home. We see the familiar back veranda with a pot, mortar and pestle and some firewood, where Daisy Teacher gave her monologue. A wide shot of the house front, at a mid-distance, appears as the last image, rather than as the establishing shot at the beginning of the film. In inverting the traditional chronological order, this home we have inhabited is soaked in memory and feeling, which would not have been the case had we seen it as just a house at the beginning.

The film in fact opens with a woman glancing at the camera and saying animatedly, ‘Amma!’ It’s an odd way to open a film in mid-sentence, with this disorienting mid-shot, to not be given a context (the master shot), but that is indeed its strength, one realises later. We enter the film in medias res (in the middle) of hearing an outburst. The context becomes clear soon after, learning that it is the older daughter from Canada, Lalitha who appears to address us. But we are not quite sure of the film’s mode of address, because the camera has made its presence felt through that repeated direct glance at us through the camera lens. The entire opening scene is filmed with a hand-held camera which adds a feeling of volatility, a slight sense of unease physically.

Suddenly the scene cuts to a public street of a row of closed shops but with a snatch of conversation among the siblings played over it for continuity. The cut away happens when Jesse mentions the bazaar of their childhood and alludes to the army’s rampage in Mannar town during the war, when they attacked innocent people and burned down shops in retaliation to an LTTE ambush of an army truck leading to deaths. Through these rhetorical moves, Sumathy breaks the traditional rules of scene construction. And in doing so she creates a narrative freedom to shift her mode of address in ways that are unexpected, disorienting and yet rhythmically persuasive.

I haven’t said much about the conversations and chit chat which really constitutes the film. There are the usual family conversations, catching up on this and that, then there is the long and disorienting monologue of Daisy Teacher, also recounting traumatic events. Anthony appears to be the sibling most damaged by the war years, having lost his youth to its terror. The two sisters remember a distant past that sounds idyllic. When Lalitha (who slips into English intermittently), asks about the disappearance of Jude, Anu, stuck at home, doing chores, caring for their mother and her own family, responds impatiently with, ‘that’s an old story, now we have other problems’! But anecdotal accounts of the history of the civil war, its horror at a personal and mass scale are woven in and out casually, including the circumstances of Jude’s disappearance. The question about what really happened to him keeps coming up. Amidst all this, a few lines of Daisy Teacher have stayed with me. When she hears that Fatima Teacher has died, she responds sharply:

“Why did she die! She’s my age. Why did she have to die!” This is in the same monologue where she irrationally says that Jude disappeared because Fatima Teacher cursed him.

Neo-Realist Acting?

The Post WWII Italian Neo-Realist cinema created a new kind of cinema and film acting, on the rubble of a war-ravaged Italy, even as the Nazis withdrew from the country’s North. Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1946), introduced a new kind of realism into acting which Bazin theorised in the course of celebrating the emergence of this movement of cinematic resistance to fascism from 1945 on. While Rossellini worked with celebrated actors like Anna Mangani, he also included non-actors, and people from the very milieux filmed. He elicited remarkable performances from them, especially from little children.

Sumathy also uses a mix of people, experienced actors like Sharmini Masilamani as Lalitha, and her own eldest sister Nirmala Rajasingham, as the mother. The actor playing the younger brother, Suman Loganathan appeared in Ingirunthu. Nirmala as a person, carries a complex political history. These personal connections with the realities presented are very important for Sumathy, in her choice of people to act in her films, along with their professional competence, which Is why I am invoking Italian Neo-Realism here, which continues to nourish world cinema, though the Italian movement ended after a few years with post-war modernisation. (To be continued)

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Sustaining good governance requires good systems

Published

8 hours ago

2025/12/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

A prominent feature of the first year of the NPP government is that it has not engaged in the institutional reforms which was expected of it. This observation comes in the context of the extraordinary mandate with which the government was elected and the high expectations that accompanied its rise to power. When in opposition and in its election manifesto, the JVP and NPP took a prominent role in advocating good governance systems for the country. They insisted on constitutional reform that included the abolition of the executive presidency and the concentration of power it epitomises, the strengthening of independent institutions that overlook key state institutions such as the judiciary, public service and police, and the reform or repeal of repressive laws such as the PTA and the Online Safety Act.

The transformation of a political party that averaged between three to five percent of the popular vote into one that currently forms the government with a two thirds majority in parliament is a testament to the faith that the general population placed in the JVP/ NPP combine. This faith was the outcome of more than three decades of disciplined conduct in the aftermath of the bitter experience of the 1988 to 1990 period of JVP insurrection. The manner in which the handful of JVP parliamentarians engaged in debate with well researched critiques of government policy and actions, and their service in times of disaster such as the tsunami of 2004 won them the trust of the people. This faith was bolstered by the Aragalaya movement which galvanized the citizens against the ruling elites of the past.

In this context, the long delay to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act which has earned notoriety for its abuse especially against ethnic and religious minorities, has been a disappointment to those who value human rights. So has been the delay in appointing an Auditor General, so important in ensuring accountability for the money expended by the state. The PTA has a long history of being used without restraint against those deemed to be anti-state which, ironically enough, included the JVP in the period 1988 to 1990. The draft Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA), published in December 2025, is the latest attempt to repeal and replace the PTA. Unfortunately, the PSTA largely replicates the structure, logic and dangers of previous failed counter terrorism bills, including the Counter Terrorism Act of 2018 and the Anti Terrorism Act proposed in 2023.

Misguided Assumption

Despite its stated commitment to rule of law and fundamental rights, the draft PTSA reproduces many of the core defects of the PTA. In a preliminary statement, the Centre for Policy Alternatives has observed among other things that “if there is a Detention Order made against the person, then in combination, the period of remand and detention can extend up to two years. This means that a person can languish in detention for up to two years without being charged with a crime. Such a long period again raises questions of the power of the State to target individuals, exacerbated by Sri Lanka’s history of long periods of remand and detention, which has contributed to abuse and violence.” Human Rights lawyer Ermiza Tegal has warned against the broad definition of terrorism under the proposed law: “The definition empowers state officials to term acts of dissent and civil disobedience as ‘terrorism’ and will lawfully permit disproportionate and excessive responses.” The legitimate and peaceful protests against abuse of power by the authorities cannot be classified as acts of terror.

The willingness to retain such powers reflects the surmise that the government feels that keeping in place the structures that come from the past is to their benefit, as they can utilise those powers in a crisis. Due to the strict discipline that exists within the JVP/NPP at this time there may be an assumption that those the party appoints will not abuse their trust. However, the country’s experience with draconian laws designed for exceptional circumstances demonstrates that they tend to become tools of routine governance. On the plus side, the government has given two months for public comment which will become meaningful if the inputs from civil society actors are taken into consideration.

Worldwide experience has repeatedly demonstrated that integrity at the level of individual leaders, while necessary, is not sufficient to guarantee good governance over time. This is where the absence of institutional reform becomes significant. The aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah in particular has necessitated massive procurements of emergency relief which have to be disbursed at maximum speed. There are also significant amounts of foreign aid flowing into the country to help it deal with the relief and recovery phase. There are protocols in place that need to be followed and monitored so that a fiasco like the disappearance of tsunami aid in 2004 does not recur. To the government’s credit there are no such allegations at the present time. But precautions need to be in place, and those precautions depend less on trust in individuals than on the strength and independence of oversight institutions.

Inappropriate Appointments

It is in this context that the government’s efforts to appoint its own preferred nominees to the Auditor General’s Department has also come as a disappointment to civil society groups. The unsuitability of the latest presidential nominee has given rise to the surmise that this nomination was a time buying exercise to make an acting appointment. For the fourth time, the Constitutional Council refused to accept the president’s nominee. The term of the three independent civil society members of the Constitutional Council ends in January which would give the government the opportunity to appoint three new members of its choice and get its way in the future.

The failure to appoint a permanent Auditor General has created an institutional vacuum at a critical moment. The Auditor General acts as a watchdog, ensuring effective service delivery promoting integrity in public administration and providing an independent review of the performance and accountability. Transparency International has observed “The sequence of events following the retirement of the previous Auditor General points to a broader political inertia and a governance failure. Despite the clear constitutional importance of the role, the appointment process has remained protracted and opaque, raising serious questions about political will and commitment to accountability.”

It would appear that the government leadership takes the position they have been given the mandate to govern the country which requires implementation by those they have confidence in. This may explain their approach to the appointment (or non-appointment) at this time of the Auditor General. Yet this approach carries risks. Institutions are designed to function beyond the lifespan of any one government and to protect the public interest even when those in power are tempted to act otherwise. The challenge and opportunity for the NPP government is to safeguard independent institutions and enact just laws, so that the promise of system change endures beyond personalities and political cycles.

by Jehan Perera

Features

General education reforms: What about language and ethnicity?

Published

8 hours ago

2025/12/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

A new batch arrived at our Faculty again. Students representing almost all districts of the country remind me once again of the wonderful opportunity we have for promoting social and ethnic cohesion at our universities. Sadly, however, many students do not interact with each other during the first few semesters, not only because they do not speak each other’s language(s), but also because of the fear and distrust that still prevails among communities in our society.

General education reform presents an opportunity to explore ways to promote social and ethnic cohesion. A school curriculum could foster shared values, empathy, and critical thinking, through social studies and civics education, implement inclusive language policies, and raise critical awareness about our collective histories. Yet, the government’s new policy document, Transforming General Education in Sri Lanka 2025, leaves us little to look forward to in this regard.

The policy document points to several “salient” features within it, including: 1) a school credit system to quantify learning; 2) module-based formative and summative assessments to replace end-of-term tests; 3) skills assessment in Grade 9 consisting of a ‘literacy and numeracy test’ and a ‘career interest test’; 4) a comprehensive GPA-based reporting system spanning the various phases of education; 5) blended learning that combines online with classroom teaching; 6) learning units to guide students to select their preferred career pathways; 7) technology modules; 8) innovation labs; and 9) Early Childhood Education (ECE). Notably, social and ethnic cohesion does not appear in this list. Here, I explore how the proposed curriculum reforms align (or do not align) with the NPP’s pledge to inculcate “[s]afety, mutual understanding, trust and rights of all ethnicities and religious groups” (p.127), in their 2024 Election Manifesto.

Language/ethnicity in the present curriculum

The civil war ended over 15 years ago, but our general education system has done little to bring ethnic communities together. In fact, most students still cannot speak in the “second national language” (SNL) and textbooks continue to reinforce negative stereotyping of ethnic minorities, while leaving out crucial elements of our post-independence history.

Although SNL has been a compulsory subject since the 1990s, the hours dedicated to SNL are few, curricula poorly developed, and trained teachers few (Perera, 2025). Perhaps due to unconscious bias and for ideological reasons, SNL is not valued by parents and school communities more broadly. Most students, who enter our Faculty, only have basic reading/writing skills in SNL, apart from the few Muslim and Tamil students who schooled outside the North and the East; they pick up SNL by virtue of their environment, not the school curriculum.

Regardless of ethnic background, most undergraduates seem to be ignorant about crucial aspects of our country’s history of ethnic conflict. The Grade 11 history textbook, which contains the only chapter on the post-independence period, does not mention the civil war or the events that led up to it. While the textbook valourises ‘Sinhala Only’ as an anti-colonial policy (p.11), the material covering the period thereafter fails to mention the anti-Tamil riots, rise of rebel groups, escalation of civil war, and JVP insurrections. The words “Tamil” and “Muslim” appear most frequently in the chapter, ‘National Renaissance,’ which cursorily mentions “Sinhalese-Muslim riots” vis-à-vis the Temperance Movement (p.57). The disenfranchisement of the Malaiyaha Tamils and their history are completely left out.

Given the horrifying experiences of war and exclusion experienced by many of our peoples since independence, and because most students still learn in mono-ethnic schools having little interaction with the ‘Other’, it is not surprising that our undergraduates find it difficult to mix across language and ethnic communities. This environment also creates fertile ground for polarizing discourses that further divide and segregate students once they enter university.

More of the same?

How does Transforming General Education seek to address these problems? The introduction begins on a positive note: “The proposed reforms will create citizens with a critical consciousness who will respect and appreciate the diversity they see around them, along the lines of ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, and other areas of difference” (p.1). Although National Education Goal no. 8 somewhat problematically aims to “Develop a patriotic Sri Lankan citizen fostering national cohesion, national integrity, and national unity while respecting cultural diversity (p. 2), the curriculum reforms aim to embed values of “equity, inclusivity, and social justice” (p. 9) through education. Such buzzwords appear through the introduction, but are not reflected in the reforms.

Learning SNL is promoted under Language and Literacy (Learning Area no. 1) as “a critical means of reconciliation and co-existence”, but the number of hours assigned to SNL are minimal. For instance, at primary level (Grades 1 to 5), only 0.3 to 1 hour is allocated to SNL per week. Meanwhile, at junior secondary level (Grades 6 to 9), out of 35 credits (30 credits across 15 essential subjects that include SNL, history and civics; 3 credits of further learning modules; and 2 credits of transversal skills modules (p. 13, pp.18-19), SNL receives 1 credit (10 hours) per term. Like other essential subjects, SNL is to be assessed through formative and summative assessments within modules. As details of the Grade 9 skills assessment are not provided in the document, it is unclear whether SNL assessments will be included in the ‘Literacy and numeracy test’. At senior secondary level – phase 1 (Grades 10-11 – O/L equivalent), SNL is listed as an elective.

Refreshingly, the policy document does acknowledge the detrimental effects of funding cuts in the humanities and social sciences, and highlights their importance for creating knowledge that could help to “eradicate socioeconomic divisions and inequalities” (p.5-6). It goes on to point to the salience of the Humanities and Social Sciences Education under Learning Area no. 6 (p.12):

“Humanities and Social Sciences education is vital for students to develop as well as critique various forms of identities so that they have an awareness of their role in their immediate communities and nation. Such awareness will allow them to contribute towards the strengthening of democracy and intercommunal dialogue, which is necessary for peace and reconciliation. Furthermore, a strong grounding in the Humanities and Social Sciences will lead to equity and social justice concerning caste, disability, gender, and other features of social stratification.”

Sadly, the seemingly progressive philosophy guiding has not moulded the new curriculum. Subjects that could potentially address social/ethnic cohesion, such as environmental studies, history and civics, are not listed as learning areas at the primary level. History is allocated 20 hours (2 credits) across four years at junior secondary level (Grades 6 to 9), while only 10 hours (1 credit) are allocated to civics. Meanwhile, at the O/L, students will learn 5 compulsory subjects (Mother Tongue, English, Mathematics, Science, and Religion and Value Education), and 2 electives—SNL, history and civics are bunched together with the likes of entrepreneurship here. Unlike the compulsory subjects, which are allocated 140 hours (14 credits or 70 hours each) across two years, those who opt for history or civics as electives would only have 20 hours (2 credits) of learning in each. A further 14 credits per term are for further learning modules, which will allow students to explore their interests before committing to a A/L stream or career path.

With the distribution of credits across a large number of subjects, and the few credits available for SNL, history and civics, social/ethnic cohesion will likely remain on the back burner. It appears to be neglected at primary level, is dealt sparingly at junior secondary level, and relegated to electives in senior years. This means that students will be able to progress through their entire school years, like we did, with very basic competencies in SNL and little understanding of history.

Going forward

Whether the students who experience this curriculum will be able to “resist and respond to hegemonic, divisive forces that pose a threat to social harmony and multicultural coexistence” (p.9) as anticipated in the policy, is questionable. Education policymakers and others must call for more attention to social and ethnic cohesion in the curriculum. However, changes to the curriculum would only be meaningful if accompanied by constitutional reform, abolition of policies, such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (and its proxies), and other political changes.

For now, our school system remains divided by ethnicity and religion. Research from conflict-ridden societies suggests that lack of intercultural exposure in mono-ethnic schools leads to ignorance, prejudice, and polarized positions on politics and national identity. While such problems must be addressed in broader education reform efforts that also safeguard minority identities, the new curriculum revision presents an opportune moment to move this agenda forward.

(Ramya Kumar is attached to the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna).

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

by Ramya Kumar

Features

Top 10 Most Popular Festive Songs

Published

8 hours ago

2025/12/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Certain songs become ever-present every December, and with Christmas just two days away, I thought of highlighting the Top 10 Most Popular Festive Songs.

The famous festive songs usually feature timeless classics like ‘White Christmas,’ ‘Silent Night,’ and ‘Jingle Bells,’ alongside modern staples like Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,’ Wham’s ‘Last Christmas,’ and Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.’

The following renowned Christmas songs are celebrated for their lasting impact and festive spirit:

* ‘White Christmas’ — Bing Crosby

The most famous holiday song ever recorded, with estimated worldwide sales exceeding 50 million copies. It remains the best-selling single of all time.

* ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ — Mariah Carey

A modern anthem that dominates global charts every December. As of late 2025, it holds an 18x Platinum certification in the US and is often ranked as the No. 1 popular holiday track.

Mariah Carey: ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’

* ‘Silent Night’ — Traditional

Widely considered the quintessential Christmas carol, it is valued for its peaceful melody and has been recorded by hundreds of artistes, most famously by Bing Crosby.

* ‘Jingle Bells’ — Traditional

One of the most universally recognised and widely sung songs globally, making it a staple for children and festive gatherings.

* ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ — Brenda Lee

Recorded when Lee was just 13, this rock ‘n’ roll favourite has seen a massive resurgence in the 2020s, often rivaling Mariah Carey for the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100.

* ‘Last Christmas’ — Wham!

A bittersweet ’80s pop classic that has spent decades in the top 10 during the holiday season. It recently achieved 7x Platinum status in the UK.

* ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ — Bobby Helms

A festive rockabilly standard released in 1957 that remains a staple of holiday radio and playlists.

* ‘The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)’— Nat King Cole

Known for its smooth, warm vocals, this track is frequently cited as the ultimate Christmas jazz standard.

Wham! ‘Last Christmas’

* ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ — Andy Williams

Released in 1963, this high-energy big band track is famous for capturing the “hectic merriment” of the season.

* ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ — Gene Autry

A beloved narrative song that has sold approximately 25 million copies worldwide, cementing the character’s place in Christmas folklore.

Other perennial favourites often in the mix:

* ‘Feliz Navidad’ – José Feliciano

* ‘A Holly Jolly Christmas’ – Burl Ives

* ‘Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!’ – Frank Sinatra

Let me also add that this Thursday’s ‘SceneAround’ feature (25th December) will be a Christmas edition, highlighting special Christmas and New Year messages put together by well-known personalities for readers of The Island.