Cultural Fantasies

When our children attended Parkview Elementary School we were amazed by the arrogance or ignorance associated with the Xmas “shows” put on that students participated in. Christmas Celebrations Around the World was the best catch all title. These were strung together with traditional songs and pantomimed caricatures – think black face equivalents.   Countries from India to Ireland and from Iran to Indonesia were implicated, all around a firmly Christian theme. From the perspective of a firmly secular/Jewish household this was bizarre. 

I was reminded of this again yesterday when we visited a special exhibit “Arab Fantasy” at the Carmen Thyssen Museum. During the late 1800’s Spanish artists, many who didn’t even visit North African countries visible from the seashore here, depicted imagined scenes and events, in much the same way and with similar effect as European artists depicted the wild west of North America. None of them were “true”. They were just projections.

How Christmas is actually celebrated, if at all, is quite different. With that introduction, here is how Christmas is celebrated in Japan along with its origin myth (Felix Fridman found the article):

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-japanese-christmas

Somehow, the school performances missed such facts!

P.S. from Tema
My earliest school Christmas concert memory was from Grade 1. I came home and proudly told my family that I had been chosen to play Mary in the Christmas play. My eldest brother said, “You can’t do that. She was the mother of Jesus, and you’re Jewish.” To which my mother pointed out, “Mary was Jewish.” Take that, big brother!