IMG_1089We put our Christmas decorations up this past weekend. This is the first year my daughter has really anticipated decorating and, more or less, helped in the process. She’s very proud of her Christmas decorations, and so am I. They are minimal but were hung with Christmas spirit. And a lot of sweat. Probably more sweat than Christmas spirit for my part.

That’s the problem with Christmas in Brazil. It’s hot. It’s humid. It is decidedly un-Christmasy. At least for someone who grew up spending Christmas a good bit north of the equator.

I tried to recreate my tree decorating memories for my daughter. We had Christmas carols playing. We pulled out the Christmas books and read Rudolph. But everytime I had to stop and rehydrate, the pleas to “Let it Snow” felt more like a cruel joke than an endearing tradition. Not that I’ve ever had a white Christmas in Atlanta, but it’s at least cold enough to necessitate pants.

I can’t shake this feeling that I’m faking Christmas and it’s not just because I’m importing my foreign Christmas culture. Brazil has already imported 90 percent of American & European Christmas traditions. The malls pipe in instrumental versions of American carols, and shop windows are filled with fake evergreens decked out in red, green, and sprayed on snow. Apartment buildings string lights in the shape of icicles and poor Santa greets kids in fur-trimmed, red velvet.

What feels so wrong about Christmas in Brazil is the juxtaposition between Northern hemisphere customs and Southern hemisphere weather. In order to make the season feel more authentic, I’ve got a few suggestions for improving Christmas in Brazil.

5 Way to Improve Christmas in Brazil

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This was in October. December is hotter.

  1. Put Santa in Board Shorts For his own sake, at the very least. It’s also hard for a parent to explain Santa’s velvet uniform to a kid running around in her underwear. “Yes, it’s very hot here, but Santa is magic and can maintain a constant body temperate even when wrapped in fur under the sun in 98 degrees.” How about some window decals of Santa strolling down the beach in board shorts pulling his sack along on a boogy board.
  2. Carols About Sand, Not Snow “Oh the weather outside’s delightful. And the barbecue’s left me quite full. Laying out that’s my plan, In the sand, in the sand, in the sand.”  They could also be more local. I think the world needs some Bossa Nova Christmas. “Gifts and fun and family and sunshine. Good will to all, good cheer we keep in mind. We’ll raise some glasses, attend some masses and dine.”
  3. Replace Red & Green with Yellow & Blue Look in the store windows and you’ll see red and green wreathes, ornaments, figurines, dinner ware. These colors are too dark and heavy for a place that’s got sunlight until 8pm followed by balmy evenings with temps in the 80s. Christmas in Brazil should be bright and bold. It should be swirled on a sarong that you wear over tanned (or in my case sunburned) legs. I propose Christmas decorations in yellow, for the intense sun, and blue, for the ocean that everyone is visiting on their summer vacations.
  4. Exchange Santa’s Sleigh for a VW Bug What good is a sleigh going to be in a tropical rainforest? Or on the sandy coast? Or the sertão, the arid grasslands? No good at all. For a truly Brazilian ride, give Santa a VW Beetle from the 70s pulled by a team of flying capybara. (Someone please draw and post that image!) I’ve seen old Beetles driving around every city I’ve visited in Brazil. Those cars can run forever in any environment. Santa can land in Caracas, send his team of reindeer back to the North Pole with the sleigh, and pick up his Beetle to continue distributing presents in South America.
  5. Christmas Palm Trees First, we need to burn all the artificial evergreens that been assembled around Brazil. Most of them are probably made by children in Bangladesh with toxic chemicals. One thing Brazil is not short on is vegetation. No more cheap, fake fir trees. Let’s decorate little potted palms. It’d be a hundred times easier to wrap light around a palm tree. There wouldn’t be room for quite as many ornaments, but I can make sacrifices.
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Rabanada. Mmmmmm!

I have no complaints about Christmas dishes. Nuts, pineapple, figs, codfish, ham, and lots more fruit. These are all things I can support. And rabanada. Especially the rabanada! It’s like french toast on steroids. It’s amazing and one Brazilian tradition I’ll be taking back to the US with me.

It’ll be my addition to the dessert table. When else wold you serve bread dipped in egg and covered with cinnamon and powdered sugar? At breakfast?

 

 

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