Feliz Natal
So. Christmas in Brasil, as you may well imagine, was pretty bloody surreal. It wasn’t just the weather either, or the fact that it was occurring in the middle of my summer vacation. The entire atmosphere was not what I typically associate with the season. A multitude of perhaps minor details became terribly conspicuous in their absence. The only person to wish me a happy holiday was the taxi driver who gave me a ride to my avo’s apartment. There were no inescapable carols, no candy canes of any sort, no men collecting donations for the Salvation Army, no afternoons spent baking cookies (in fact, there were almost no cookies whatsoever), no candles in windows (fake or otherwise), no long evenings dwelling over hot cocoa (or a more weather-appropriate equivalent) and reminiscing about years past, and no wrapped presents tucked under the tree. The tree itself was fake and of moderate size, bore no lights of any kind, and was nothing like any tree my family had ever put up. I’m rather used to the decorating of the tree being a family affair, and in recent years my family had started putting ours up just after Thanksgiving, just so everyone would be home to help.
This year was somewhat different. I was sitting on the couch reading a book and watching it rain when the housekeeper, Lilya, approached me. She had quite a lot to do that day, and wondered if I wouldn’t mind decorating the tree for me. I was somewhat bemused by this, but told her I would, so she handed me a stack of boxes and left me to it. I’ll say this for it - it was without a doubt the most color-coordinated tree I’ve ever out up in my life. There was no star or angel to go on top, but it was a vision of warm faded whites, ivories, and golds. The bottom was wrapped in a large piece of burlap as though it were a live plant, ready at any moment to be placed in the ground, and by it’s side I arranged a simple but elegant nativity - just Mary and Joseph, kneeling in prayer on either side of a strangely alert looking baby Jesus.
The few presents that accumulated beneath it’s wiry branches over the course of the next week were left in the bags and boxes in which they had been purchased. They had all been bought from various clothing boutiques, so the surprise wasn’t entirely lost, but it struck me as odd that my parents hadn’t so much as added a little ribbon for festivity. While I’m accustomed to a holiday all about love and family and giving and feeling warm sticky gooey goodness inside, Natal - for this family at least - felt much more like a mid-summer excuse for a couple of great parties. When I first learned that I would be traveling to Brasil I had imagined that I would have to adjust to a much more religious observance of the holiday than I was used to, but this was just about the complete opposite.
I went to several parties, including one surprisingly uproarious Rotary get-together (which culminated in a sing-along of Noite Feliz, and other poorly translated holiday favorites), but they really all just acted as warm-ups for the actual Diniz family Christmas Eve party. I guess that’s a solid plan - figure out exactly how much champagne you can handle through a series of trials and errors so you don’t miscalculate and make a fool of yourself in front of your grandmother.
As usual, preparation for the party took about three hours, and involved a lot of me host sister hurrying back and forth between her closet and her mother’s, utterly shirtless (and yes, braless) and trying to decide between outfits. I’d been dragged along for a shopping excursion earlier in the month and so actually had a shirt to suit the occasion. I considered putting on makeup, but decided that it was a patently bad idea. It sounds silly to say, but I’ve always had someone to do that for me. I don’t wear makeup much, and whenever an event has arisen where it seemed necessary, there’s always been someone on hand more than happy to do it. I’d rather arrive completely plain-faced than give myself a crash-course in cosmetology and wear the results to a family get together. It’s the thought that counts, anyway. I opted to just read a book and avoid looking in my sister’s general direction. Honestly, she could have at least found a towel or something.
We arrived at 9:30, slightly early, and went straight through the house to the back porch. My absent-eyed grandmother sat at one of the cloth-covered tables, her right hand loosely grasping a glass of Coke while the other rested in the lap of her equally catatonic nurse. On the far edge of the porch a table had been set up to hold the evening’s alcohol supply (or rather a small portion of it, as each bottle that disappeared from the table over the course of the night was quickly replaced by a fresh one from the refrigerator), but my family did not bother to head towards it, only waved their hands at the man busy waiting on my cousins. As I sighed and reminisced about a punch bowl full of eggnog, kept cool with floating bricks of eggnog ice cream, the aunts hurried to procure me a glass of champagne. It was the beginning of a pattern that would last the entire night. I’m not all that sure why, but the family seemed somewhat distressed when I didn’t have alcohol in my hand, and if I so much as left my glass behind to dance, they were immediately flagging down Paulo to fetch me a new one. Drinking slowly seemed to be the only way of both appeasing my hosts and ensuring that I maintained the ability to walk in a straight line.
At 10 o’clock my Uncle Leonardo, looking younger than I had ever seen him in kakis and a ‘Lacroste’ polo, went to boot up the decked-out sound system. It wasn’t exactly The Chipmunks, but at least none of my cousins had been put in charge of the song selection, and samba suited me just fine. Speaking of Leo, for those of you keeping track at home I did finally catch The Dane’s name. They call him Lucian (Leo calls him Lou), which is short for Luciano. There’s one mystery solved, at least. I also met my cousin Marina for the first time. Before now she had been on an exchange much like mine, located in Colorado, but she had apparently been quite unhappy there, and had opted to return home early. From what little she said to me in English I figured that her language skills were reasonable good and I wondered what the problem had been, but it seemed likely that she had been badgered about it enough already, so I didn’t ask.
Dinner was ham, bread, wild rice, and salmon covered in capers, but people seemed inclined to eat it sparingly. They certainly didn’t eat enough to absorb any of the alcohol already splashing about in their stomachs by the time dinner was laid out. The sheer lack of sweets present was somewhat jarring. I don’t expect many families serve up as many cakes, cookies, and candies as mine does, but there was absolutely nothing here. The only sugar in sight was in a bowl on the liquor table, so that my cousins could add it to their vodka. After food people began to dance, though the older uncles and more fragile women remained in their seats to munch on pistachios and chat. I’m not the most graceful of performers, but my samba has improved substantially in my time here, and my soused aunts were not a demanding crowd.
Eventually we were all reminded that it was, in fact, Christmas. See, Brasilians have an interesting approach to the holiday. While Americans tend to party the night before and then make sure to go to bed so they can wake up at the crack of dawn for presents, Brazilians say bugger sleep altogether, we’ll just dance and drink until it’s tomorrow. At midnight Antonia got hold of the microphone and urged everyone to the dance floor, where we held hands in a circle and recited several prayers everyone seemed to know by heart. When the circle broke people began rushing about, hugging and crying and wishing each other ‘feliz natal’. Glicia seemed particularly effected, but I figured that was because she missed her son currently in North Carolina.
The younger cousins flocked to the tree (a potted tropical shrub hung with wire ornaments and large rose-shaped lights) and began the process of handing around presents. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement of ‘only two or three presents per person’ so the exchange itself was rather brief, but it was fun to watch all the same. My parents gifted me with a very comfortable set of striped purple pajamas, which made me smile. I’d always thought the receiving pajamas on Christmas Eve was simply the best, because then you could wear them that night and then all the next day, effectively showing off your new pj’s in the languor of a drawn-out Christmas morning. It was a bit irrelevant this year, considering that there would be no Christmas morning to speak of, but I was pleased nonetheless. My other gift was a necklace, and while it is quite pretty, it has suspecting that my hosts were somehow in cahoots with my mother. My mum has been trying to get me to wear pink for years, and now my Brazilian family is succeeding, because I can’t exactly hand back their presents and say, “No really, it’s lovely, but it’s just not my color.” Pink-purple cheetah-prink havanas for my birthday and now a pink pearl necklace - don’t think I don’t see what you’re up to.
The night carried on as before, with a few notable milestones. At one o’clock in the morning, one of my aunts pulled her husband’s shirt off while they were dancing together, which prompted Antonia to snatch up the microphone again and goad the other’s to follow suit, until every man present, from the youngest cousin to the oldest uncle, had been divested of his shirt. I don’t recall such a thing ever occurring at a May Family Christmas party, but hey, when in Brazil. That was also around the time that everyone was given a santa hat.
At two in the morning, Amanda finally convinced Leo to dance. Lucian hadn’t been able to make it to this party and without his presence Leo had been uncharacteristically unsociable, and while he had participated in the grand shirt removal and laughed along at the other’s antics, he had drank nothing but Coke (why was he allowed to get away with it?) and had steered clear of the dance floor. It was a shame too; while most Brazilians appear to possess some skill at samba, Leo is without a doubt the very best at it that I have ever met, particularly when dancing with a partner. He only stayed on the floor for two or three songs, but I enjoyed it immensely.
At three in the morning my parents called it a night and went back home to crash. I still had a few dances left in me though, so I stayed behind with Amanda. I had long since shut myself off from the champagne, but I was rather hot from all of the exertion a decided to pour myself a glass of soda the consisted primarily of ice cubes. My aunt caught me in the act however, and began expressing her dismay over my choice of beverage. As we were quite close to a speaker and thus were forced to communicate through the use of hand signs - her point appeared to be that I ought to drink alcohol, because alcohol would make me happy. I respectfully declined and turned around to retrieve my glass, only to find my uncle topping it up with whiskey. Only a little, he warned me (as though he weren’t the one pouring it), otherwise it would make me fall asleep. I laughed because really, what else could I do?
At four in the morning the music was shut off the cousins that were still itching for activity were ushered out of the house to find their amusement elsewhere. They were kind enough to drop me off at the house on their way to a nightclub downtown. It was a mercifully short drive with so many of us stuffed in the undersized Citroen, and now that I had ceased movement the aches in my legs and feet were making themselves known. I was well and truly ready for bed by the time we pulled up in front of my house. In the time that it took Amanda and I to rustle up a house key, Marcela had escaped from the car and begun dancing around the street, but I had no qualms about leaving it to the others to coax her back to the vehicle. Crawling first into my new pajamas and then under the covers, it seemed to me that it had never been quite so satisfying to go to sleep.
At six o’clock I woke to the sound of Amanda coming home. I was still exhausted, but it was Christmas, and I couldn’t help getting up even if there was nothing to get up for. I made myself a cup of cocoa and sat in the kitchen, staring through the dining room at the unlit, cherub-bedecked tree until 7, when I could return to bed, satisfied with my observance of tradition. I woke again at noon, and banged about until Amanda rose several hours later and we attended a sleepy late lunch at my grandmother’s. I was lucky later and was able to contact a fair few people in the US over Skype, to wish them a merry Christmas and hear accounts of the holiday from above the equator. The next few days passed in a haze of late nights, late mornings, and a smattering of casual family gatherings. I had read that holidays were typically the hardest time for exchangees, but while I missed my family and the familiar practices of home, the pain was by no means unbearable. In a way, it didn’t feel like I was celebrating Christmas at all. Though many of the symbols were the same, the mood was entirely different, and that essential Christmassy something was nowhere to be found. I’m not knocking the Brazilian’s mode of celebration or saying that their Christmas wasn’t ‘real’ Christmas. It just felt to me like Christmas and Natal were to very similar but distinctly separate entities. I found it most curious.
Long story short, a good time and a good deal of champagne was had by all. I was rejected from Reed, but Tim made the Dean’s list and Twinkle is adjusting to life in Oregon and a Christmas package from my grandmother arrived today with all sorts of goodies, like Heath bars and some very fetching notebooks. It even had - wait for it - a tin of crème filled pirouettes. Special edition white chocolate raspberry ones too. Eat that, Canada.
Sorry. They Canadian girl in my district likes to talk loudly about the monthly care packages she receives from her brothers back in Vancouver. But does she get yarn and toffee? No, indeed she does not. Merry Christmas! Feliz Natal! Happy Holidays! Boas Festas! And a very splendid new year to you all, as well.
P.S. Fun fact: The only Christmas songs I had on my itunes to aid me through this strange time were ‘All I Want for Christmas’ and ‘White Christmas’, both of which I found amusingly ironic and listened to quite a bit.
P.P.S. At I have some amount of luck after all, because the internet decided to function long enough for me to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which I was pretty pumped about. By the end, almost every human in the world had been turned in John Simm, and I was content to leave it there, but they’ll be showing part II on new year’s. Who’s excited? Are you excited? I’m excited.