Cowboy Santas aren’t the only things missing from Swiss Christmases. Also, how do US & CH Silvesters compare?
Dear Auntie SAM: I’m wondering, how you experience Christmas and New Year in Switzerland compared to the USA?
My mom, my sisters, and I lived few years in a wonderful, old brick home deeded to my great-grandmother’s family by President Abraham Lincoln. It had a winding staircase and secret spaces and a grand front room with sliding French doors in two walls. It was here we spent my favorite Christmases.
One year, my mom brought home the tree and kept it and our presents hidden in that front room until Christmas. Sliding open the doors and seeing the tree and our presents for the first time on Christmas morning remains one of my most magical memories — and the one that I’m most reminded of when first seeing Basel’s Christmas market every year. Both experiences remind me of a universal truth about the celebration of Christmas: many hours of hard work go into someone else’s moment of joy.
Most years, we helped mom prepare for Christmas. We’d pop popcorn to string the kernels; glitter ornaments; decorate the house; listen to Christmas music, and bake sweet-smelling cinnamon cookies that we’d tie to the tree with red ribbons, or wrap as presents, or save for Christmas day.
Some years, relatives would fly in to stay with us. Other years, mom invited friends. Every year, we’d open presents and eat a Christmas feast. Aside from preparation, everything about Christmas in the States happens on Christmas Day, so we do all that we can to make that day perfect.
Needless to say, someone always cried & if you were smart, you’d have settled in near the egg nog and just let the day ride.
By contrast, several weeks ago, small sacks marked with numbers and strung together with red ribbon appeared tacked above a window in the home of the little girl I babysit. Each week since then, she has introduced to me a new toy or a song she likes off her new cd. Last week, we baked cookies – but she and her family had already baked many batches. They had been to the Christmas markets … a few times. They had celebrated St. Nicolas‘ Day. And her parents had days off from work that allowed them time to prepare or to travel.
In the States, there aren’t many ways to feel the Christmas season outside of one’s home aside from shopping. Many of our cities are nearly bankrupt, so most Christmas lights are put up by businesses who start trying to entice us into the Christmas spirit by stocking dancing Cowboy Santas in October. Our Christmas feels so corporate that many of us dislike the holiday and try to avoid it (relatedly, ask me in November about Thanksgiving).
While, here, although the season’s expectations seem just as demanding, there are several occasions for people to get into the spirit – both inside and outside one’s home. Every sip of glühwein at the Market or an evening with friends around a Feuerzangenbowle warms one to the season in a way that hearing the musak version of „O Holy Night“ at Macy’s cannot.
The many opportunities people get to feel Christmasey start as soon as those many hard workers put the final plastic reindeer in place at Barfüsserplatz and lasts until the lights go away across the Rhine. Time spent being social in a festive place is the essential difference.
I’m not saying there aren’t family members here who on Christmas Day don’t settle in near the eierschnapps; I’m just saying it feels to me that the invisible hand here comes from tradition more than Adam Smith.
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New Year’s Eve, on the other hand, is just as wonderfully effed up here as it is in the States. I love any day that polarizes people into two camps: the „I’m not going out there because people go crazy on this night“ vs. the „I’m totes going out there because people go craazzzy on this night!“
Also, ya gotta love any day of the year that encourages you to wake up the next day & pretend as if RIGHT NOW you’re gonna start behaving more wisely.
It’s comforting to see that Americans aren’t the only people wildly — daringly — ferociously — optimistic.
Happy New Year! XO AS