A Moroccan Christmas Eve

Having turned in the last of my grades yesterday and thus put an end to my busiest semester yet, I slept in this Christmas Eve morning. After a lazy breakfast and some quality Internet time I made my way out to the corner café for a nis-nis, the Moroccan café au lait. After an hour reading the special Christmas issue of The Economist and a bit from Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan, I took a walk around my neighborhood.

Today is a normal Friday in Morocco. Sometime after noon, schoolchildren headed home for couscous. One by one, the shops closed. The mosques filled up and emptied. The schoolchildren are now joking and tussling outside the school gates. Friday afternoon classes will begin shortly. Some shops will open up again; many won't. But that's because it's Friday, the Islamic sabbath, not because it's Christmas Eve.

No, it's not beginning to feel a lot like Christmas here; it's not even coming close. Other than a few upscale shops and supermarkets (in Morocco supermarkets are upscale), there are no signs of Christmas. Even there, decorations are limited to Christmas trees and a few garlands. The same mix of Arabic and Western music plays in cafés and shops and offices. There are no non-stop Christmas music stations.

I miss our American Christmas season. I didn't think that I would, but I do some. I admit: to compensate, I've been streaming Big R Radio: Christmas Classics on iTunes almost every day. I bought a cheap artificial tree, and I even made some of my students learn the chorus and first verse of "Jingle Bells".

Trying to concisely explain Christmas to my students has been difficult. They're more familiar with the Christmas tree and gift-giving from movies and TV shows. As with other American styles and customs, some Moroccan families have taken to imitating they see in American media. The girl working at the supermarket checkout assured me that she celebrated Christmas too--they have a tree and give gifts.

This will be my first non-commercialized Christmas. The massive cultural consumption, holiday spectacles, and suffocatingly festive atmosphere are stripped away from the holiday. All that remains is a yearning for some of my family's traditions and the Advent liturgy I hear in church each week.

I've tried to imitate what my family does as best as possible in this new environment. I have a tree. I baked a few of my mom's Christmas cookies. Tomorrow morning I'll have the same egg dish with a side of grapefruit we always eat.

And then there is the Advent season. Scholars tell us Jesus wasn't born in December. Christmas trees, stockings, and Santa Claus do not appear in the gospel accounts of Jesus' birth. Theoretically there could be Christianity with absolutely no Christmas.

But it does exist. We have this strange accumulation of customs and stories (what do a fantasy prince who cracks nuts in his extra time or a marginalized reindeer with a bright red nose really have to do with the Incarnation anyway?) They're part of being an American Christian. I grew up with them. As strange as they are and as much as I struggle to explain and justify them all to inquiring Moroccans, they are mine.

And this year I have been even more conscious that something else that is mine is this Advent season--the time Christians have chosen to reflect in anticipation on the event of God becoming man to save us all from Satan's snare when we were gone astray. It didn't have to be that way, but it is. And I am a part of it. I maybe can't justify all the consumerism of the Christmas season, but the act of giving gifts to loved ones mirrors what the Wise men did with Jesus. And if done in the right way, it fulfills what the apostle John said about the Incarnation's effect on us, "We love because He first loved us."

So, later this afternoon I will head out to try to live out that ideal while sharing my culture and tradition some: I will take some Christmas cookies to my Moroccan neighbors and friends. And after that I will go to church for the culmination of this season of Advent anticipation.

Scenes From Morocco: Trimming The Tree

Artificial Christmas trees and Christmas decorations are now available for Westerners in most supermarkets. Moroccans also buy them in consumerist imitation of what they have seen on TV.