Two (Western) Holidays in One

By Beth Green

It’s holiday season again.

My relatives and friends in the U.S. have already started groaning about the incessant drone of shopping-mall carols, the thought of making lists and checking them twice, and the old rant that Christmas comes earlier every year. It makes a nice change, Facebook-reading-wise, from all the election posts, but mostly it draws my attention to the way the end-of-year holidays are celebrated differently all over the world, and the way facets of American culture have been adopted in Asia.

A Christmas tree vies for attention with one of the old towers of Xi'an

This year, in the Philippines, I’m looking forward to seeing how this overwhelmingly Christian country celebrates Jesus’ birth. The Christ figure is revered here, and Christmas carols started up, right on time, in late September.

But I’ll never forget how the decidedly not-Christian country of China has unofficially adopted the spirit of two western holidays—Halloween and Christmas—and turned them into one big mash-up of fun and partying at the end of December. 

The first year I spent in China, 2006, my partner and I took advantage of the long Christmas weekend given to the foreign English teachers at the school we were working in and flew up to Xi’an with some friends. Xi’an is the home of the Terracotta Warriors, one of the must-see sites in Asia. I was thrilled that we were going to see this historic place, and while a little bit homesick as always over the last two weeks of December, I didn’t mind skipping the holiday that year.

Larger-than-life Santas for sale on the sidewalk in Xi'an.

So I was truly surprised to find Xi’an all dressed up for a party. A huge Christmas tree, lights everywhere (well, Chinese cities usually have lights everywhere, but this was more than normal) and yes—even in the city that started the Silk Road—Christmas carols. 

We toured the Warriors in the daytime, and then in the evening headed over to the Muslim Quarter (one of Xi’an’s ancient districts) to have dinner. The fun of eating Muslim fare on Christmas in China was not lost on us. On the way, we met throngs of people out for a stroll. 

Sidewalks in China can get crowded, and what with one-point-however-many-billion people you see why, but these groups of people were mobbing the pavement. Vendors selling balloons and pinwheels (which are often bought in China on holidays as they’re believed to blow luck to you) did roaring business. Groups of girls wearing glowing devil’s horns over bright orange clown’s wigs tried to take sneaky pictures with us foreigners. Small children carried water-filled bags of tiny goldfish their parents had bought them—it wasn’t Christmas, it was a Halloween Carnival!

Twelve months later I looked forward to the spectacle, and thought I was prepared for it. To research a potential new job, my partner and I flew to another city over Christmas. We made sure we brought our cameras, even though it was primarily a business trip, and asked at the hotel for the best way to get downtown. This year, we decided, we wanted to photograph the action. 

A "snow" fight in Guiyang.

However, if we thought the broad avenues of Xi’an were flooded with people, we hadn’t anticipated what the narrow city streets of Guiyang, Guizhou province, would feel like when everyone was in good-time mode. 

Guizhou province is poor, and a lot of people from there go find work in the more prosperous east. The people who stay behind work hard for small wages. And apparently, love a chance to party. In Xi’an by comparison, our experience had been kind of sedate: groups of people walking, snapping photos and snacking. In Guiyang, bands of young men were ‘attacking’ gangs of young women with cans of silly string.  The laughing women would retaliate with aerosol cans of colored fake snow—the kind you use to frost and decorate windows in holiday season. By the end of a couple of hours on the street, you could spot the married men—they were the ones the girls had left out of the snow-fight.

Devil's horns on Christmas? Why not?

My favorite sight that night was a trio of girls, winter jackets and blue jeans completely covered in wads of silly string and blasts of fake snow, holding roses some boys had given them. They were writing words on the sidewalk in silly string, and then lighting the messages on fire. They had a hard time getting space on the sidewalk to do this, but once they announced their intention, they got plenty of area protected by the crowd of onlookers, myself included. To my English-teaching delight, they mostly wrote English words, “hello!” burned brightly, and then “I love you.”

I can’t remember now if anyone wrote, “Merry Christmas,” but the holiday was celebrated, all the same.

[Note: Read more about Beth’s trip to Xian  here , the trip to Guiyang here  ]

Feliz Navidad

I spent my first Christmas away from Australia in South America. I had figured it wouldn’t be dissimilar from the Land of the Long Weekend. After all, South America was in the same hemisphere, and experiencing 40 degrees C on Christmas Day wasn’t unheard of at home either. Catholicism was common in Australia, as in South America, so really, how different could things be? You got it—our traditions were poles apart. I was living in Peru at the time and had the pleasure of celebrating with friends from various parts of the globe, including many South American countries. We decided to group together our Christmas traditions and make it one big cultural mash-up. Since then, I've adopted some of the following Christmas traditions into my own celebrations, and I love that I can travel the world in one day and remember the wonderful friendships I've made over the years. Here's what my friends taught me:

Colombia: The nativity scene is made of clay figures, known as pesebres. The Mary and Joseph figurines wear traditional Colombian attire, such as a poncho, fedora hat, and shawl. El Dia de las Velitas (Day of the Candles) is held on the seventh of December and that’s when Advent prayers start. December 16th marks the start of La Novena de Aguinaldos, a prayer that is said over nine successive days up until Christmas Eve. These prayers tell what happened during the nine-month pregnancy of Mary and Joseph. This Colombian tradition dates back to the 1700s, and little has changed since the first prayer was said.

Peru: Nativity scenes are called retablos. Historically, priests carried small altars from house to house with a nativity scene similar to the one in Colombia. Nowadays, priests use portable boxes instead. (I guess their muscles got tired). Dances and plays are put on throughout the festive season, and traditional Peruvian food is served up during these celebrations. As an act of good will, churches and generous people make choclotadas (cups of hot chocolate) and give gifts to those less fortunate.

Venezuela: On December 16, families display their pesebres. (They’re called the same in Colombia.) At dawn on Christmas Eve, church bells chime and firecrackers explode to wake up all the worshippers. On the 5^th of January, children leave out hay and water for the camels of the Magi (the wise men) and, in the morning, they find their offerings are replaced by gifts. If the children wake up and have a black smudge on their cheek, they believe that Balthazar, King of the Ethiopians, kissed them while they were asleep.

Ecuador: Children write letters to baby Jesus and place their shoes on their windowsills on Christmas Eve. The next morning, the children usually awake to find noise-making toys in their footwear. Firecrackers, brass bands, and dancing in the streets are popular, and most families attend midnight mass.

Brazil: Christmas is influenced by the Jesuit monks. But over the years, Brazil has adapted many North American traditions, which means the old traditions are falling by the wayside.

In South America, the commercialism of Christmas is no way near the frantic extent it is in other parts of the world, and to be honest, it's a welcome relief. The focus is on family and friends and celebrating beliefs that at times combine modern-day religion and the traditions of the ancestors. Santa and his presents are not the be all and end all. For me, I found the true spirit of Christmas in South America.

The mother of my “adopted” family in Peru did a great deal of volunteer work for the children’s hospital and a psychiatric home for children in Lima. On Christmas morning, she invited me to join her in her own Christmas Day tradition—handing out presents to children at the hospital and psychiatric home who either had no family or were so poor their family couldn’t afford gifts. Armed with sweets and books, we set off. I had no idea this particular morning would be the one that changed my whole view of Christmas. Previously, I had thought it was one commercial rip-off. But in that moment, when I was surrounded by children who just wanted a hug and were happy to see someone show them some love, I finally got what it was all about.

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year because of the beautiful friendships I've made. I now celebrate these with my husband and our children, and I hope that as my kids get older and explore the world, they'll find their own favorite holiday traditions.

How about you? Have you adopted favorite traditions from other cultures to make your celebration of any holiday more special?

Seasonal Traditions, Old and New

Christmas is not a huge celebration in our house. We don’t trim a Christmas tree, bake holiday cakes, or hang colorful lights around the eaves. There are no milk and cookies waiting for Santa to come barreling down the chimney, hungry and thirsty from his sooty exertions. But before you get the idea that we’re a couple of Scrooges who do our best to ruin the joy for everyone else, let me reassure you that Christmas doesn’t pass us by entirely unnoticed. We have a rather eclectic set of holiday traditions, mixed and matched from my childhood memories and my husband’s Persian culture.

So even though Christmas is fairly low-key around here, we still manage to get into the holiday spirit. Here are my favorite ways to celebrate this joyful time of year.

My favorite ancient Persian ritual:

A few days before Christmas, we celebrate Shabeh Yalda, a winter solstice celebration whose roots go back to ancient Persia and its Zoroastrian rulers. (I blogged about it here last year.) On this longest night of the year, we stay up late eating pomegranates, preserved peaches, watermelon, and pistachio nuts, while reading Persian poetry, usually Hafez or Rumi. There is something about eating summer fruit in the deep freeze of winter that makes me think of people long ago who hoarded fragile produce as an offering to the sun god in hopes that it would give him strength to overcome the darkness and bring back spring. In our modern age, with our confidence in science and knowledge of the ways of nature, it doesn’t hurt to remember people who lacked such certainty yet paid greater attention to the world around them.

My favorite holiday meal:

Christmas dinner at our house is a far cry from the meal I grew up with. My mother used to serve a ham baked with pineapple slices and a brown sugar glaze. After the feast, the bone and remaining scraps of meat would go into a German-style split pea soup that would last us well into the new year.

Ham is not a big hit in my household today, so I make javaher polo instead, a Persian dish whose name means “bejeweled rice.” It may come from a culture that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but I can think of no more festive dish to serve on a holiday table. The white rice sparkles with ruby-toned barberries, slivered green pistachios and creamy almonds, glistening orange peel, and a splash of golden saffron. No matter how much I prepare, this dish never lasts as long as my mother’s pea soup did, but paired with a roast chicken and served with a glass of sparkling wine, it looks and tastes just like Christmas should.

My favorite holiday decoration:

I may not deck the halls with boughs of holly or my house with garlands of lights, but my one nod to the neighborhood decorating frenzy is that I hang an evergreen wreath on my front door. I love wreaths of all kinds – herbal ones in the summertime, fragrant with mint, lavender, and thyme. Fruit wreaths in the fall as a tribute to bountiful harvests. A circle is such a comforting shape, with no beginning and no end.

My favorite family tradition:

Throughout the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I slice up a Christstollen, a dense German cake filled with dried fruit and almonds and iced with melted butter and powered sugar. Arranged on a special plate along with a few decorative rosemary sprigs (which are usually putting out their tiny blue blossoms at this time of year), it makes a sweet addition to breakfast.

This tradition started many years ago with a crotchety old aunt of mine. She lived in Dresden, a German city that at the time lay well behind the Iron Curtain in the German Democratic Republic. This aunt despised my mother (and, by extension, my sister and me) and never wasted an opportunity to criticize everything we did, from the way we dressed (not fashionably Parisian enough – and this from a dyed-in-the-wool Communist) to where we lived (in the decadent heart of Capitalism). But she saved up her kindness for one act of generosity at Christmas, when she’d send us an authentic Dresdner Christstollen, purchased from a famous bakery whose holiday confections were intended only for export. You had to have serious political connections to buy one in its city of origin.

The pastry arrived in a metal box with a picture of a medieval city sketched on the side, and it took metal cutters, a hammer, and a chisel to pry the container open. But the treat inside, a gift from one of the most unpleasant people I’ve ever encountered, always reminded me that everyone, no matter how nasty they may be, has the capacity for kindness. Isn’t that what the holidays are all about?

Off The Beaten Track: The Spirit of Christmas - Nepal-Style

This week we have another adventure from Tracy Tyson, an American educator living in Nepal, where she trains teachers and helps schools set up Montessori programs. She follows up her account of a Tibetan wedding in Kathmandu with a seasonal tale for the holidays.

A few years ago, I made the trek from Charikot, where I was then living, to Kathmandu just in time for the Christmas. I spent the holiday with some friends – a Nepali family and a couple of Americans who lived with them. In an effort to be non-partisan toward any religion, now that Nepal is no longer a Hindu kingdom, the new government declared Christmas and Eid (which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan) national holidays, so schools and government offices are closed during these times. This declaration is a great example of what I love about Nepal – a Maoist government that celebrates two religious holidays! I guess they don't agree with Mao's statement about religion being poison!

My friends cut a branch off an evergreen tree in their yard and decorated it. Although it didn't quite have the desired conical Christmas tree shape, the gesture was in the spirit of the holiday. Everyone got a present – mine was a jar of peanut butter (all natural and "made by handicapped persons" here in Kathmandu, according to the label). The kids in the family squealed with delight at their gifts – and they were teenagers!

Christmas dinner turned out to be an interesting Nepali/American mix. For starters we had chaat, a crispy, spicy, Indian-style party mix. Dinner began with a first course of dal-bhat (rice and lentil soup), plus a very hot pickle made from potatoes. This was followed by meat for the meat-eaters and a tasty veggie curry for the vegetarians. And then for dessert – fruitcake! I don't really like fruitcake, but fortunately you can't get disgusting things here like the yucky dried fruit they put in fruitcake, so the cake just had raisins and nuts, and I actually liked it.

Later, as I made my way home, an older man offered me his seat on the bus. I tried to tell him in my primitive Nepali that I was fine standing, but he insisted. Then he said "Merry....." and turned to his neighbor for help on how to complete the rest of the phrase. "Chreesmus," he subsequently added, holding his hands held in the prayer-like position in front of his chest the way the people here do when they greet each other.

This experience reminded me that one thing I love about Nepal is all the little daily kindnesses people show me here! They are such warm, genuine people. When they smile at you it comes straight from the heart.