Christmas, Inc.

Christmas in Beirut was definitely interesting. Before I go any further, I should tell you that there are just as many Christian churches in Lebanon as there are Mosques. 60% of the population identifies itself with team Islam, falling under the sects of Sunni, Shia and Druze and about 35% to 40% identify with team Jesus, falling under the denominations of Maronite, Greek Orthodox and Catholic. The Catholic churches, however, resemble Greek Orthodox more than they do what we are used to seeing in the US. The rest of the population identifies itself with one of the other dozen or so official religions that are registered here in Lebanon.
While there was snow way off on the distant mountains, there was none here in Beirut for the holidays. And I say holidays, plural, because during the week or two around Christmas there are also several other holidays being celebrated here including Hijri (Islamic) New Year, Western Christmas, Ashoura (which commemorates the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson), New Years (western), Eastern Orthodox Christmas and Armenian Christmas. I felt compelled to celebrate each and every one of them and my liver hasn’t been the same since.
Starting a few weeks before Christmas, every store, restaurant and business packs on the Christmas decorations. Christmas has become a strange phenomenon, not just here, but around the world, I think. When I was in China for Christmas a few years ago, people went nuts there, too, with the decorations and piped in music. But somewhere along the way, things got lost in translation and Christmas really had no religious significance, it was just a reason to have a sale or more advertisement. Chinese salespeople would be dressed up like Santa in the stores as they tried to get you to buy cookware and “All I want for Christmas are my two front teeth” played over the public address system in maddening repetition. Beirut wasn’t too far off of this. People in traditional Islamic wardrobe were sporting Santa hats and buying musical Christmas trees. Men in full on Santa suits, minus the jolly belly, were standing side by side with men in rainbow wigged clown costumes, selling cotton candy on the road side. A nearby hotel had what appeared to be a manger scene in front of it, but when you finally came up to the front of it you realized that there was a Santa sitting on a rocking chair in the manger and instead of wise men, he was surrounded by lawn gnomes. Some of the lawn gnomes where posed in the act of pushing wheelbarrows, others were sitting on toad stools. I thought someone had dropped peyote in my eggnog and I was in the throes of a bad trip, but no, it was just Christmas. I guess we only have ourselves to blame. In the US we took Christmas and turned it into a mass consumerism binge fest and then exported it to the rest of the world.
Amy and I went out for dinner on Christmas Eve and had a traditional Lebanese Christmas dish. It was a bed of a risotto like rice covered with pieces of turkey, crumbled flatbread and a spinachy-leek type sauce. Then a quick drizzle of diced onions and vinegar. Mmm, Mmm, just like mom used to make. I have no idea what it was called. After that it was a night on the town in the Beirut neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, where most of Beirut’s hipsters hang out. Most of the bars were high end and expensive but we managed to find a cheap hole in the wall that was playing bad ‘80s music. As we walked through the streets that night, several people made a concerted effort to come up to us and wish us a “Merry Christmas” as if they had been waiting all year long to see a westerner to say that to.
On Christmas morning, I saw in one Beirut store window, a giant stuffed toy moose with a Santa hat on that had the words, “Santa Dude” written across it. I’m pretty sure that regardless of what their religious affiliation is, people in Lebanon have no idea what a moose is. But you can guarantee that it was made in China.