The Christmas Spirit?
By Terry Caesar
‘Tis the season for Christmas songs. Normally the heart sinks. Mine does anyway. During how many Christmas holiday seasons can one bear to listen to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” — again, again, every year, every day, everywhere? Yet the other day I found myself humming along at a surprisingly pleasant “folk” version.
Say, or hear, what you will: You can’t escape Christmas in the United States from the end of November to the end of December. Take merely the music. You have only to step outside to hear it, everything from “Silent Night” to “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.”
Or consider Santa. He used to be visible primarily in the malls, accorded a special space where children could sit on his knee and whisper their Christmas wishes into his ear. Now it’s increasingly common to see people walking around dressed up as Santa, in the guise of his cone-shaped red hat with a little white ball on top.
What would a foreign visitor to the United States think of the Christmas spectacle here in 2011? Of course it would depend upon where the visitor comes from. Some areas of the earth, such as the Middle East, have no Christmas at all. Others do, in varying or different degrees.
Take Brazil. I’ve spent Christmas twice in Brazil, once in 1993 (in Maringa) and once in 2010 (in Curitiba). Each time I was—not to put too fine a point on it—shocked. The reason can be put simply: where was Christmas? The trees, the sleigh bells? For a few days each year, I even missed “Rudolph.”
Then I felt blessedly free of him, and all the rest. Of course there is seasonal music aplenty. (I swear, I even heard “Rudolph” once!) But it’s not blasting away in every store, virtually exhorting you to get into “the Christmas spirit,” while you shop, shop, shop.
Just so, all the familiar (to me) Christmas imagery was in place: fur trees, snow flakes, and so on. But the seasonal displays in shop windows weren’t as lavish as they would be in the United States. Instead, the public presentation seemed more understated, even tasteful.
During my whole American life, Christmas has meant facing one profound question: Is Christmas becoming too commercialized? Each year schoolchildren have to write essays about this question, while adults wring their hands. The fear that Christmas is becoming too commercialized is to Americans as much a part of Christmas as Rudolph and his reindeer.
In contrast, each year do Brazilian schoolchildren have to write the same fretful essay? I’d guess not, and with good reason: Brazil is simply not, even today, as utterly and thoroughly commercialized a society as the United States. You can’t see the difference better than during Christmas.
This doesn’t mean that therefore Brazil is closer to something called “the spirit of Christmas.” Indeed, insofar as Christmas in Brazil comes in the middle of summer rather than winter, it’s superficially further from this “spirit,” which originated, most likely, in Europe, where one does not normally yearn to be at the beach, as Brazilians do, in late December.
Whatever this “spirit” consists of, though, it is now pretty much everywhere in the world felt to be under siege by modern consumer society, especially at the point where Christmas is traditionally celebrated at its most venerable: in the home, sharing love and fellowship, especially with children, in the form of gifts. To any American, this is where Christmas in Brazil unsettles most.
Brazilians customarily give one gift, whereas Americans give more. How much more? It depends (as of course it depends with Brazilians). Generalizations are difficult to make. But I believe it can be justly claimed that the energies of consumption define the season far more profoundly in the United States than in Brazil.
Hence the great difference in the respective public spectacle. The music, the bells, the tinsel, the wreaths, and all the rest are designed in the U.S. not only to enhance the excitement and color of the season (is there anywhere in the world more sheerly beautiful than New York at Christmas?) but to spur consumption.
America requires it. Brazil doesn’t. The result is the almost baffling (or insatiable) plenitude of available material goods in the one country, in contrast to the more restrained availability of these same goods in the other. The economy demands that Americans give gifts. The economy does not so much demand that Brazilians do.
Why not? Generalizations are even more hopeless on this point. But at Christmas anyway, Brazilians seem to me to be shaped by religion much more than Americans. It may even be that commercialization has not yet transformed the core values of Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It’s simply harder to remember in the U.S. that this birth has anything to do either with reindeer or this season’s hottest toy.
Is it possible to say that Christmas is “better” in Brazil than in the United States? I don’t think so. To each society, its own Christmas. Each gets the Christmas it deserves. No one Christmas oversees them all. Nonetheless, I hope to be forgiven if I wish that next year at this time I didn’t have to hear so much of the damn music, please Rudolph. Oops, I mean God.
Terry Caesar is an American writer currently living in Texas who has spent time in Brazil. He is the author of several books, which are available on Amazon.com. His most recent book is a memoir entitled, Before I Had a Mother.
