Christmas event in department store
On November 29th, my birthday, I went to Sakae in Nagoya with my friend. It was so cold that I felt winter was coming soon. There are illuminations on both sides of the street.
We went to Matsuzakaya because I had heard a nice event was held there. Going to the south building of Matsuzakaya, we could see a big gate and a nutcracker. I wondered what kind of event this was. When I saw the brochure, I found it was offered by Kathe Wohlfahrt. According to the brochure, Christmas Bridge, a store of Kathe Wohlfahrt, is in Germany and sells Christmas goods all year round.
Going through the gate, we saw a row of houses on Christmas in Germany recreated. At the center of the row stood a very big balloon Christmas tree. I felt as if I became a child again and was dreaming.
A lot of Christmas goods were sold there. They were glittering. I thought they were very cute. The thing which fascinated me most was a nutcracker. It seems that nutcrackers originally were tools for cracking nuts, but now they are Christmas ornaments.
In my house, we don’t celebrate grandly. So I envy German Christmas. I want to celebrate more grandly!
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Comments (9)
Rudolf
wrote on December 08, 2005:
Funny: I’ve never thought of nutcrackers as a Christmas ornament—they’re just quaint old things associated with old-time Germany. There’s a German restaurant in Hamamatsu called Mein Schloss, and when you walk in through the door you practically bump into two man-sized nutcrackers—any time of the year.
Then again, people tend to eat nuts on winter nights—maybe there’s a connection.
Also: Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is a ballet piece frequently performed around Christmas time.
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Mayu
wrote on December 14, 2005:
I have never seen a nutcracker. Can it really crack nuts? I want to feed nuts to the nutcracker. But I dislike nuts.
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Rudolf
wrote on December 15, 2005:
Yeah, the Nussknacker does crack nuts. It works like a pair of pliers: the mouth is the business end, and there’s a lever on the back of the figurine that opens the mouth when you raise it and closes the mouth when you press it down.
They’re not very convenient or practical, however, and since many of them are hand-made and expensive, they’re mostly used for decoration rather than for actually cracking nuts.
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Bee
wrote on December 17, 2005:
Here it is getting warmer and warmer. I imagine it must be difficult for you to visualize Christmas taking place in summer, with people walking in bermudas and short- sleeved dresses and staying out late in the streets as the day stretches lazily into the night.
Although we are in Brazil and temperatures today hit 30C, most of the Christmas traditions were brought here by European immigrants so you will find all the glitter and twinkling lights used to decorate trees for dark and long northern winters wrapped around palm trees or tropical specimens like the blue jacarandá tree.
On Rua Normandia (Normandy Street) shopkeepers attract their customers with exquisite decoration and orchestras play Christmas carols for the public in the street. Several Santa Claus dressed in red woolen outfits sit on golden moons hanging from tree branches and strategically placed canons spray fake snow on passers-by.
I just loved the delicate garland and creamy colours used in this shop arrangement, the contrast between the red and green used by L’Occitane and the orange tree framing this window.
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Rudolf
wrote on December 17, 2005:
Bee, I’m curious about Santa Claus in Brazil. On one of your photos there’s Father Christmas in his red pajamas—that character is relatively recent and wasn’t invented until the late 19th century in the protestant US.
Where I’m from, a catholic region, Santa Claus looks like this. He’s wearing the costume of a bishop, i.e. a high-ranking priest in the catholic church. That’s because he represents an actual historical bishop, Saint Nicolas of Myra. He is celebrated on 6 December, and thus is not really connected with Christmas at all—except that Saint Nicolas’ Day and Christmas take place in the same month.
South America is predominantly catholic—which Santa do you have in Brazil?
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Bee
wrote on December 19, 2005:
It’s true Brazil has a strong Roman Catholic heritage, however, Brazilians do not celebrate Saint Nicolas Day and the costume you have linked to is most unusual here. You may find it in some southern towns with strong German influence.
Santa Claus here is called Papai Noel (Father Noel) and he is believed to live in Greenland. Apparently, this character was imported from America in the 50’s and there is no local tradition associated to him. It only became popular because of the commercial appeal. The popular nativity scenes – presépio – , displayed in public places and private houses (under the Christmas tree) were brought by Portuguese and Italian immigrants.
Ours is a big country with many different ethnic backgrounds and cultures so each family follow their own Natal (Christmas) with practices they have incorporated from this mix. I, for instance, commemorate it according to the purest Polish tradition but for Saint Nicolas who, in our family, has become the local Papai Noel in red clothes and appears on Christmas Day instead of December 6th.
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Elizabeth
wrote on December 23, 2005:
Hi! I read the Mie Journal for the first time today. It’s all very interesting. I live near Chicago and I am studying Japanese now. I have friends in Nagoya so that is how I found you!
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Elizabeth
wrote on December 23, 2005:
Can you please remove my last name from my previous post? Thank you very much. I did not mean to include it.
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Rudolf
wrote on December 23, 2005:
Hi Elizabeth—your surname has been removed.
Takuya has just posted this photo of the snow in Nagoya. 16 centimeters is 6.2 inches to all you non-metric people out there. :-)
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