Our friend and colleague over at Thebrooklynnomad has been busy preparing for the holidays and just put together a few photos in honor of the holiday around the planet. Among his photos are Christmas shots from Paris, Lisbon, New York City, Beijing and Prague.
You can see both part 1 and part 2 of the series over at his site. Merry Christmas from Gadling!
Merry Christmas from Madrid! Last year I covered some of the big Spanish Christmas traditions. This year I’d like to talk on a more personal level about how I and my in-laws celebrate. I’m married to a Spaniard. A Castilian to be precise, as regional identity is important here. Living in Madrid we have a very Castilian Christmas. My five-year-old son is pretty much Castilian too, although he’s got a Canadian dad and speaks English as fluently as his public school English teacher.
Being a good little Spanish kid, he’s written out his letter to the Three Kings about what he wants: The Lego Tech crane, a parking garage for his cars, “everything about Real Madrid” (the city football team), and “La Casa de los Gormitis”. The Gormitis don’t seem to have made it across the Atlantic but they’re the big thing for European boys right now. It’s a cartoon where children have a secret base under their parents’ house and turn into monsters to fight the bad monsters in the fantasy world of the Gormitis. Yeah, it hits all the buttons.
Of course the Three Kings came to visit his school, but my son wasn’t fooled. He immediately recognized that the African king Baltasar was played by his English teacher, a black guy from London. Reminds me of that Jesse James story I wrote about earlier today. Since the Kings don’t show up at our home to put gifts in our shoes until January 6, we still haven’t done our shopping. It always feels like the Spanish Christmas gives you more time to shop, even though it’s still exactly a year between gift-giving.
The season is in full swing, however. Everyone has been buying tickets for El Gordo, the national lottery. Personally I think gambling is a stupid waste of money, but I’ll be checking out the numbers this year because my optometrist gave me two tickets! This is a common way for businesses to reward regular customers.
This week my family set up two Bethlehem scenes. My mother-in-law has an old one of lead figures that goes on a side table in the dining room. It has the Kings, buildings, stream, bridge, the manger, and lots of villagers. Over it all Herod looks down from his castle with a rather grumpy expression. This diorama is far bigger and more elaborate than the diminutive Christmas tree we put in the hall. We also have a Playmobil Bethlehem scene (called Los Clicks in Spanish) that my son sets up in his room.
Last night we chowed down on lombarda (red cabbage with pine nuts), langostinos (king prawns), and heaps of nuts, candies, polvorones, and turrón. Polvorón is my favorite. These are crumbly little shortbreads made with flour, nuts, sugar, and milk. Like with Oreos, there’s more than one way to eat them. Some people just bite down and let the whole thing crumble in a tasty, dusty mess. Others squeeze them into a compact bit of tidy sweetness. I’m more of a crumbler than a squeezer. Turrón is an Arabic confection made of almonds, sugar, honey, and egg white. Other ingredients such as chocolate are added to create an endless variety of flavors.
Just before dinner we heard King Juan Carlos I’s annual Christmas Eve speech. Keeping with tradition, my family completely ignored him, even though they made sure the TV was on. I watched it more for the sake of this article than to actually hear what he had to say. Sitting in his palace with a Nativity scene to one side and a photo of Spain’s victorious football team to the other, El Rey talked about the economic crisis, the threat of terrorism, and the drug problem. Pretty much the same issues as last year. There was also a Christmas message from Spanish soldiers serving in overseas operations such as the Indian Ocean, Antarctica, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.
Got to run. Soon my 99 year-old neighbor will show up. She’s become my son’s de facto great-grandmother. It’s nice to see someone born in 1911 interacting with someone born in 2005. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law is cooking up a giant Christmas lunch. Yeah, I lucked out in the mother-in-law department.
It’s Christmas, when the Christian world celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. The Muslim world celebrates too because in Islam Jesus is considered a prophet.
Christianity has spread all over the world. One of the best things about travel is the different world views it exposes you to, and one of these insights is that religious artists have created Jesus in their own image. Europe has a white Jesus, Africa has a black Jesus, and Latin America has a Latino Jesus.
So what did Jesus really look like? The Bible is a bit sketchy about his personal appearance, but being a Levantine Jew he wouldn’t have looked like the Nordic hippie we’re familiar with in the West. He probably looked a bit more like this picture above, which is in the 16th century church of Ura Kidane Mihret on Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Brown skin, dark eyes and hair. . .this is what most people in ancient Judea looked like.
Ethiopia became Christian in the 4th century, and is the second oldest Christian nation after Armenia. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has built incredible houses of worship all over the country, including the famous rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, stone buildings dug out of the bedrock.
For more on the fascinating culture that produced this image, check out my series on travel in Ethiopia.
Once again this year, Google and NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) have teamed up to help eager girls and boys the world over track Santa’s progress throughout the day. What is new this year is that you’ll also be able to follow jolly St. Nick using Google Maps and Google Earth, as well as your mobile phone.
As you read this, Santa has already set off on his appointed rounds and begun delivering those all important presents to children across the globe. You can follow his progress by going to the official NORAD Tracks Santa page, which is available in a variety of languages. You’ll also find information on how to track him in Google Earth by clicking here.
For the first time ever, you can track Santa while on the go as well. Google Maps for mobile users can launch their app and do a search for “Santa” to get the latest updates on his progress and you’ll also be able to receive reports via Twitter and Facebook too. Twitter users will find tracking info at @noradsanta and Facebook fanatics can click here for updates on that site as well.
Modern technology has made it easier than ever to track Santa’s sleigh and prepare for his arrival. Now you’ll know exactly when to take the cookies out of the oven and pour the milk, so they’ll both be as fresh as possible when he gets to your house. It never hurts to put the big guy in a good mood when he’s delivering the goods!
Merry Christmas everyone!
“Here,” she gestured. “Try this,” and I opened my mouth. The chocolate landed on my tongue and began to melt. It was unlike anything I’d ever tasted. It reminded me of the carob chips foisted upon me during my mother’s hippy stage. It was also a bit like the Hershey’s Special Dark miniatures I always traded for my sister’s Mr. Goodbars at Halloween. But this chocolate was definitely a distant cousin to the more familiar wrapped in silver or covering a mixture of peanuts, caramel, and nougat. I was in heaven.
“What is it?” I mumbled around the square melting on my tongue.
“That is what Cadbury’s calls a bittersweet. I think it tastes just like Christmas.”
And with that, my friend Tan’s grandmother wrestled off the tin’s lid and brandished another chocolate like it was pirate’s treasure. “Ah, this one’s a caramel. Go on, try it. It’s gorgeous.”
Cadbury’s? The makers of those heinous chocolate eggs filled with sugary goo and made to mimic real chicken eggs? That Cadbury’s? I was incredulous. And the tin can? The only thing I’d ever seen sold in a tin can that size was the popcorn trifecta sold by the Boy Scouts. Never had I witnessed such an assortment of chocolate in one place. This was certainly no drug store Whitman’s Sampler, the likes of which my mother had been tucking into my Christmas stocking for as long as I could remember. Christmas always included many variations of chocolate in my childhood home, but I had never celebrated Christmas with a taste quite like this.
I sat there that Christmas Eve, on a stranger’s floral couch, happily savoring each chocolate that Gran handed me. Periodically, she’d find a new flavor and tell me a bit of a story such as the first time she tasted a raspberry-filled, prefaced with “isn’t it lovely, dear?” But most of that time was spent in a chocolate- and silence-filled companionship. I’m not sure what filled Gran’s thoughts, but mine circled about what I had blithely left behind in Oregon.
The time came for us to bundle against the cold and walk to Midnight Mass. I’d never been to a Christmas Eve service anywhere before, and I approached that service with the attitude of a scientist. That night I would sit among believers and witness their hullabaloo. I certainly doubted the experience would have any impact on my agnostic self.
And yet, twenty years later, I can still hear the crunch of snow beneath my shoes and feel the wind bite at my neck as it snaked its way beneath my collar. It was a short walk through the village from Tan’s house to the church, but it was a cold one. Not much slows the wind across England, and Oxford’s distant towers and spires certainly offered no resistance to that winter storm. I was sniffling with the cold by the time I took my seat on that worn pew, snuggled between my college friend and a neighbor who smelled of damp wool and cough drops.
I have but a vague recollection of the minister’s homily. But I do remember the terrible weight of homesickness that fell upon me for the first time ever. Sitting there, the lone foreigner in that small stone church, hearing about family and love, I suddenly wanted the Christmas I knew my family was having without me. I wanted snickerdoodles and Russian teacakes, a Douglas fir covered in both glass and hand-made ornaments, giggling siblings. I wanted to gather the ingredients for my mom’s fudge, pull out the stained recipe card, and butter the dented baking dish. I wanted the same Christmas traditions I’d been celebrating for as long as I could remember but couldn’t remember ever really thinking about. Suddenly, the 5,000 miles between us made me hunger for my family’s Christmas — something I couldn’t purchase regardless of my Visa card’s available credit limit.
That night, lying in my borrowed bed, paid for with household tasks and stories of Americana, I ached for my family back home in Oregon. For nearly five months, my only contact with them had been letters written on paper so thin it barely held the words together. But more than time zones and miles separated us. I was on an adventure and they were back where I’d left them.
When I headed off to college, I left small-town Oregon with barely a backward glance in my 1980 Chevy Chevette’s rear-view mirror. And I had just kept going, looking instead toward all the things I knew must be out there, since they certainly weren’t back home. I had come from a life of powdered cheese in a green can and house-brand semi-sweet baking chips and what I wanted was a block of real Parmesan and Guittard chocolates. Getting at least a taste of that life was what mattered most to me. Even this trip to the United Kingdom had been preceded by simply a phone call to my mother, “Mom, I’ve been accepted to study abroad in England and if I can figure out the money thing, I’m going.” I hadn’t even considered how my absence would impact them.
As much as I loved my family, I wanted more. I knew there was a world out there far removed from what a life with an Oregon logger would offer me — I’d been reading about it for years in the books and travel magazines that the county bookmobile brought me every few weeks. Over the years, I had developed a taste for the exotic that the comforting food of home couldn’t satiate.
Before Christmas, I had heard my mother’s voice exactly three times since finding out firsthand if Pan Am really was “flying better than ever” back in August of 1989. Once when I let them know I had safely arrived in Carmarthen and again when they called to sing me a “Happy 21st Birthday!” And then, not quite two weeks before, as I headed off on my Christmas holiday, I had gathered a pile of coins on the shelf of a red phone booth. Starting with several pound coins, I fed the phone and dialed home. After just a few pleasantries, the phone demanded more coins. The conversation quickly became a series of jangling clinks and pauses. Finally, I loaded the last of my coins and shouted rapid-fire, “I love you all so much. I’ll call again as soon as I can!” My family was shouting back “Love you!” when the dial tone cut them off.
Christmas morning arrived with clear blue skies and much yelling and laughing between Tan and her family. As we gathered in the living room, Tan donned her best Santa Claus techniques and doled out the loot beneath the tree. I was embarrassed to see her family had wrapped some small items for me. Her mom just smiled as I became more and more flustered that I hadn’t given them all individual gifts. “Oh, it’s all right, dear. Everyone should have a little something to open on Christmas morning.”
Later, after polishing off the Yorkshire pudding and marzipan, Gran gestured to me. “Would ya like to phone yer mum? I’m sure she’d be happy ta hear from ya. And don’t ye worry about paying fer it neither, it’s Christmas after all.” My unexpected tears made it a bit difficult to see while I dialed the phone, but I managed. I held my breath until my mother’s voice came on the line. Right then, I wanted to hear her voice more than anything I’d ever thought to put on a Christmas wish list.
Standing in the hallway, I glanced at the mirror hanging above the telephone table as I spoke to first one parent, then the other. Reflecting back at me was the same dark hair, the same green eyes. But I seemed different and it wasn’t just the tear streaks on my cheeks as I struggled to hide from my parents just how much I missed them. Then my grandmother’s voice scratched its way into my ear.
“Merry Christmas! How are you dear? Doesn’t seem like Christmas without you making fudge like you always do. Are you having a great time? What kinds of things are you getting to see?” She punctuated her questions with her familiar smoker’s hack and sips of coffee.
“Grandma, it is beautiful here. Oxford is just amazing — I even got to sit in one of the private dining halls. Grandma, there are these dents worn into the benches from people’s behinds sitting in the same places for hundreds of years. There’s just so much history here, it’s amazing.” My voice trailed off as my enthusiasm wore itself out.
“Grandma, I miss you guys. I hope you have a really wonderful Christmas.” My voice cracked before I could add, “Without me.”
“Oh, little missy. I hear those tears. You’re just the same as your mom, acting like you don’t miss one another terribly. You know, that’s what Christmas is all about, appreciating the folks who make this life worth living. Christmas is about the easy and the hard parts of life.”
After I said my goodbyes and rang off, I waited to return to the living room until I scraped my face dry with my sleeve. Hearing my family’s voices had made the day finally feel like Christmas. The kaleidoscope of Christmases in my mind’s eye, how I had celebrated in the past and how I hoped to celebrate in the future, all came together. Christmas finally connected the spectrum of where I came from with where I hoped to end up.
When I sat back down next to Gran, she handed me a small, wrapped package not quite the size of a matchbox, but thicker. Raising my eyebrows, I looked at her. She waved her hand, “Such a little thing, Tan must have missed it under the tree.”
Inside was a single square of bittersweet chocolate. It may not have been a Whitman’s Sampler, but it would do.