Before moving to Turkey, I had somewhat steeled myself to the idea of a December with no holidays. It's only natural: no Jesus, no Christmas. There's no reason to have a celebration in late December, right?
Wrong. In mid-November I walked into Starbucks only to be struck dumb by the sight of Santa Claus, reindeer, and decorated evergreen trees all around. Bags of Starbucks Christmas blend were laid out on display tables, and the familiar Starbucks mix of jazzy Christmas tunes played in the background. I was nonplussed, to say the least. What on earth was Starbucks thinking; didn't their marketing team realize that Turkey doesn't celebrate Christmas? Does retail homogeneity have no limits?
However, as I waged my own mental war with Starbucks during the next few weeks, the city of Ankara rolled out all its decorations. Suddenly my daily commute became an adventure, as each day I noticed more trees covered in lights, or images of Santa smiling and saying "Mutlu Yıllar!" While the holiday cheer can't compare with any U.S. town, it was certainly more than I'd anticipated. One bakery has a giant sign reading, "Happy Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!" My students were getting into the holiday spirit too. One of my classes proposed a "secret Santa" gift exchange for later this month, and all of my classes began asking about my plans for Christmas.
But to be fair, any mention of Christmas in Turkey ought to be accompanied by a hint of sarcasm denoting quotation marks. To Turks, there is no difference between "Christmas" and New Year. For this we can thank Starbucks, Hollywood, and anyone else who's helped import Western culture. It seems that the multitude of holiday traditions and celebrations built up around December are irresistible, even to those who don't care to commemorate the birth of Jesus. So at some point in the last century, Turkey adopted a number of Christmas traditions, bumped them all back a week, and claimed that it's all a New Year celebration. Gifts, trees, "Noel Baba" -- all of it is geared toward December 31.
This causes confusion to the point that my students don't understand that in the West, we have two separate holidays in late December celebrating two different events. I've had a number of interesting conversations in which I have to explain that we don't celebrate Christmas on December 31, and that Western New Year celebrations mostly involve staying up until midnight to toast with champagne.
Our school was gracious enough to give us the 24th and 25th off, so I'll be able to have some time with friends and attend midnight Mass at the chapel of the British Embassy. My students aren't so thrilled about this, as it meant four-hour make-up lessons, but they've been good sports about it. They understand that it's not easy to be so far away from family and friends during an important holiday, and when I mentioned that I never get to go to church because I work on Sunday mornings, they were sympathetic.
To make it up to them, the other two Americans and I decided to treat our classes to a couple Christmas carols. With a borrowed guitar and a couple slapdash rehearsals to finesse something resembling three-part harmony, we dragged our groups to the school's restaurant and sang to them. The response was mostly positive, even though some students were coerced into singing along on "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I have no doubt that there are videos floating around somewhere on Facebook by now, considering the number of students whose phones were pointed at us the entire time. If nothing else, the guy from the accounting office seemed to get a kick out of our serenade.
In other news, all our snow has melted and it's been in the fifties so far this week. I hear this is supposed to continue through the week, so the odds are not looking good for a white Christmas. But it's still significantly colder than my past few Christmases, so I'm mostly okay with it. The main point is that no matter your location or environment, Christ was still born, and he dwells among us. This is the Charlie Brown minimalist approach to Christmas I've developed, and I'm content with that.
Merry Christmas to you all! 聖誕快樂!
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