Christmas explosions
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Out in the verdant, suburb-like wealth of Palermo, everything was peaceful on Christmas Day. It could have been June in New York, since the apartment where I spent the day had a view stolen from 63rd Street and 5th Avenue in nyc. It overlooked a park with a rectangular base nearly the same dimensions as Central Park, and ringed by similarly modern apartment buildings.
But Christmas Eve was another story. We ate salmon and steak a few blocks from the Congress building, and 10-minute walk from the cathedral where we attended a 10-pm mass. (The cathedral deserves mention. The interior (see the Numbers page) is typically cathedral-like, but from the front (see below) it looks like a courthouse and from the side it resembles a non-descript, graffiti-marred business building. The Argentine Cardinal led the services.) We had hardly begun eating when firecrackers began exploding outside the restaurant’s (open) windows. And not your every-day pop-pop type, either, but rather massive noise-makers. Apparently this is how Christmas Eve is celebrated. At first it seemed the firecrackers were being dropped from the tops of buildings, but later we saw a father and 2 small daughters lighting and tossing these things – it looked risky. The news agencies later reported that this year’s Christmas Eve celebrations were unusually safe. Nobody was killed by fireworks, although two small children were hospitalized with serious injuries. (On the flip side, the police were called to a greater number of homes to resolve family fights.)
Who knew that firecrackers could celebrate Christmas? Whatever happened to Silent Night, Holy Night? It’s surprising to me that holiday traditions are so different. I guess holidays, ingrained as they are in religious and social traditions, seemed to have resisted global amalgamation. As David Sedaris points out, a bell still brings easter presents in France.
Maybe it’s not so surprising that holiday traditions differ so much, but rather that we (at least in the US) know so little about these other traditions. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I just learned that Russians celebrate Christmas on January 7th. Since that’s my birthday, I probably would have remembered if I had heard this before. (I learned this reading a cable at my new job at the Herald. Putin recently helicoptered an enormous tree to a rural Russian village after learning that, due to government bungling, the village was planning to use a fake tree.) Here, the arrival of the 3 Magi kings on January 6 is a significant holiday; kids leave grass and water for the king’s camels and presents are exchanged.
Growing up, I was under the impression that Christmas, at least, was relatively universal, and that families worldwide were standing in churches, holding candles and singing carols. (At the cathedral here, by the way, there was no singing, and no candles save the usual few by the altar.) Maybe part of why we tend to think such religion-related holidays are universal is that, to admit their non-universality could seem to undermine their perceived truth?
Anyway, we’re hearing that the New Years’ eve firecrackers are like Christmas Eve times 10, and that you should try to avoid going out on the streets anytime during that night to avoid being hit by a stray firework.
antes era quiet sunday night
despues tenés some kind of record
Keep it up.
lach [enviado el 28 Dec 02]