Home for Christmas - In Qatar

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A Snow-Spewing Christmas Tree in Qatar

Home for Christmas - in Qatar

One of the unheralded benefits of living in the middle of the Muslim world is the ability to ignore Western holidays. This year is our 3^rd Christmas in Qatar. While we didn’t leave Europe to escape snow globes, manger scenes and familial expectations, their absence each Christmas could have been listed in the benefits package for sure.

As you may know, throughout history Christmas has been largely driven by four factions; we’ll call them The 4 C’s. Each "C" has successively been encroached upon until eventually being overthrown by the "C" which follows it.

Goddess-worshippers: Ok, not a ‘C’ but, you use your imagination and ‘G” is a "C" with bite. This group is known more officially as Pagans.  Almost all modern day symbols of Christmas stem from the pagans acknowledgment that the warmth of the sun is returning. Not only did the 25^th mark the beginning of noticeably longer, sunny days, ancient pagans (like Christians) decided to use the day to celebrate a god's birthday. Unlike Christians they celebrated the son of the queen of heaven [the son was curiously also the reincarnated husband of the queen of heaven, his mother (that’s a long, juicy tangent waiting to be sucked)]. On that note, here’s a little tidbit to help promote jolly mirth this holiday season: it has been suggested that the Christmas tree is an ancient symbol for Nimrod’s fertile, umm, rod. Pagans kind of view Christians as spiritual colonialists who re-purposed pagan symbols.

Christians: If religions had national days, Christmas would be the Christian National Day (just replace national day fireworks with a chorus of angels and heavenly lights). Christmas is the day where Christians ask the world to forget any atrocities performed in the name of Jesus and to remember him, and by extension them, as innocent as babes freely giving fresh joy to the world. Somehow it works and much of the world now pronounces that the “reason for the season” is the birthday of baby Jesus, which is kind of sweet, even though historically inaccurate.

Consumerism: A few un-jolly citizens have given Christmas the stage name “Consumermas”. Like the fairy of the economic world, consumerism hasput some bling on  ecclesiastical lights by dressing them up with lots of garland and multi-colored, blinking. You'll hear consumerism sing songs that proclaim merry, merry, merry while you buy, buy, buy. Knowing the most effective change is wrought when you start with children, Consumerism's brilliant marketing strategy says, “Hey, it’s baby Jesus’ birthday! Since he isn’t on earth, why doesn’t everyone on earth buy gifts for each other? Lots of gifts!” Consumerism bends over backwards to be stuffed with a big, thick wad of your money at year’s end.

Comparison: I think of this as keeping up with the Jesus Jonses (although in our family, I also call it keeping up with the Wackers). This is what perpetuates Christmas of both the Christian and consumer sort — although I'd argue that few Christians have the jingle balls to admit that while in their minds Jesus might be the reason for the season, in their actions comparison is the reason for their consumerism. While most people don’t need a generator to keep their Christmas decorations sparkling, most people do feel the need to decorate no matter the visual outcome. Even conservative Christians aren’t exempt from decorating; they just do it with a nativity scene rather than reindeer. And about those Christmas presents. Left to your own devices, would you really buy your children presents on December 25 if the rest of your world wasn’t? An enormous amount of Christmas celebration hinges on keeping children from being ostracized or feeling inferior to their friends. Would you choose to spend a stressful day with every single member of your family, extended, if you weren’t guilted into it? Many people would but a great number of people would rather not which leads an inordinate number of people to go completely off the other side of the scale. They skip the water and go straight for the wine. As Edenland points out with a glaze of very dark humor, drinking is all fun and games, unless you’re an alcoholic.

  

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Garden Furniture & Christmas Trees

side-by-side in Qatar

Once you understand the history of Christmas, it’s easy to see why Christmas isn’t widely celebrated in Qatar.

• In Qatar consumerism is practiced year round, so there really isn’t a need to boost the economy at the end of the year. 
• While Muslims do revere Jesus and think he’s an eloquent prophet, they don’t shine ecclesiastical lights on him in December and elevate his status to savior of the world. And as a Muslim friend of mine said, Muslims (& most historians and some Christians) recognize Jesus’ birth as occurring any time between March and September (the time of year when shepherds watch their flocks by night).
• Even if you go back to the ancient roots of Christmas, the end of the dark, unfruitful season isn’t something joyously celebrated in the desert where winter is the fruitful, rainy-er-ish season. With temperatures in the 20’s (70’’s F) winter is the swellest time of year here. 
• In spite of the swell weather, most expat revelers leave the country, making it even easier to not compare since most of the people who celebrate aren’t here. Of course, there are the pre-Christmas celebrations like Saint Nicholas Day on Dec 6, which caused an uproar this year.  

Most people, even non-conformists, have a little something they find pleasant about Christmas. I see the wisdom in acknowledging that perhaps we could all stand to be a bit more joyful and kind to one another. I can see how small white lights in the dark of a cold night are pleasant. How joy can be promoted with food. How paying enough attention to someone throughout the year so you can buy a thoughtful gift for them can encourage you to be kind. But the hype and around Dec 25th is unnecessary — and unavoidable — in Europe and North America. In the end I think TalkBackTy says it best, “We’re all hungry, horny and tired. Beyond that, it’s all social pressure.”  


Which is why this year we’ll be home for Christmas - in Qatar. It's not that we won't make it a special time; I'm always for making a day special, whether it's December 25th or February 25th. My husband and I perform enough cultural niceties to keep our kids from feeling like total social outcasts. We have a tree; this year my husband pulled it out from under the stairs so the children could decorate it. They did that entirely by themselves while we sat outside sipping coffee with a friend in the warmth of the December sun. That's is the kind of tradition I could get behind.


We also buy a few gifts for the kids. But only for our children; many years ago my husband and I stopped buying gifts for each other and all family members who do not live within a few feet of us, which, for me, pleasantly reduces much stress. 


On Christmas Eve we eat something special. If there's one thing I love, it's food. The past two years we invited double-digit numbers of friends to our house for a BBQ, because that's what we/I wanted to do. But this year I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by daily life and a bunch of people at our house wasn't going to work. In fact a few days before Christmas Eve I realized that the family (of 3!) that we wanted to invite was too overwhelming. They kindly said we could relocate to their place. (Yeah, for friends.) We unanimously decided that cooking, even if shared between us, was too much work. We wanted to do something special this year. So we did — we ordered lasagna from Fabio's — it was delicious. And we laughed, and it wasn't the alcohol laughing, it was us because we were genuinely pleased to be doing what we were doing with people we were genuinely pleased to be with —it also helps that our children had scampered off to bat a balloon around the tennis courts.


Here's wishing you have a delightful day doing something that pleases you with people who make you laugh. Merry Day to us all!