CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY TRADITIONS IN THE USA AND AROUND THE WORLD, PART ONE OF TWO©

Christmas Holiday traditions both within the USA and around the world provide unique insight into regional historical, religious and cultural approaches to this celebration. 

Part One of this Two-Part Travelblog article focuses on a few traditions around the world which intertwine the history, religion and culture of the location during the Christmas Season.

TWO CHRISTMAS MARKETS AND WINTER GLOW LIGHT FESTIVAL ARE HOLIDAY TRADITIONS IN BRUGES, BELGIUM.

The Christmas Market in the City Centre of Bruges, Belgium is beautifully decorated and embellished -- welcoming visitors with their atmospheric lighting in the typical Winter Glow style.

In addition to the Christmas Market and the ice skating rink, there are also various light installations throughout the city of Bruges. In particular is the light experience trail Winter Glow, consisting of various light installations along the extensive route.

CELEBRATING THE CHRISTMAS SEASON IN TOLEDO, SPAIN.

The magic of Christmas comes alive in Toledo, Spain because of its rich history and unique traditions. Among the enchanting sights, one in particular is: the magnificent Christmas tree at Zocodover Square.

When it comes to immersing one's self in the flavors of Christmas in Toledo, the treat that stands out as a beloved tradition is the exquisite marzipan. Renowned for its quality and craftsmanship, the marzipan from Toledo is a culinary delight.

QUEBEC CITY'S GERMAN CHRISTMAS MARKET.

When the air becomes crisp and snow begins to fall, Old Québec transitions into a stunning winter wonderland with snow-capped 17th and 18th-century buildings, festive lights strung along doorways and roofs, and in the heart of Old Québec, a charming Québec City German Christmas Market that runs from late November until just before Christmas.

Although established only 15 years ago, it provides visitors the opportunity to discover German and European Christmas traditions.

"ILLUMINATIONS IN JAPAN", AN ANNUAL WINTER TRADITION.

Illuminations in Japan are often associated with the Christmas season, but they usually last the entirety of winter. These types of light up displays are common around train stations, shopping areas, and city streets. Amusement parks also have illumination installments.

Winter illuminations around Christmas and New Year have become a popular attraction in cities across Japan. Illuminations are typically displayed between November and December, but some run longer, starting as early as October and running until Valentine's Day or even into spring.

Among Japan's first and most spectacular light shows is Kobe's Luminarie, an Italian designed light festival which was first held as a memorial to the victims of the disastrous Kobe earthquake in 1995.

DECEMBER MARKS THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS IN ARGENTINA, WHERE CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES IN BUENOS AIRES EVEN INCLUDE MIDNIGHT POOL PARTIES.

Traditional images of Christmas primarily include snowmen, mince pies, snuggling before a roaring fire, and a warmly wrapped Santa Claus, but not in Buenos Aires where December is the start of the Summer holidays in Argentina, and the weather is HOT, i.e., 30°C / 86°F.

Argentina is a Catholic country, therefore Christmas centers around religion. Families celebrate on Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day by getting together for a cold buffet, opening presents and attending Midnight Mass, after which it is time to party! Midnight pool parties are popular, and dance parties go on until the wee hours of the next morning.

The city is decorated with fairy lights, traditional Christmas trees and all the trimmings. Christmas decorations go up on December 8th (the Festival of Immaculate Conception) and come down on January 6th (Three Kings Night), when children put out hay, water and cookies for the Magi and their camels.

One of the largest Christmas trees in Buenos Aires is in Galerias Pacifico Mall on Florida Street, decorated with more than 8,000 Swarovski crystals. The iconic Obelisk on 9 de Julio Avenue is also decorated.

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS BLANKET MODERN ATHENS AND THE TRADITIONAL DECORATED KARAVAKIA SAIL AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.

By the first week of December, Christmas trees will have appeared on every Athenian square, especially the primary one which is lit ceremoniously on Syntagma Square).

For many years in the past, however, traditional small boats called "karavakia" have been the yuletide centerpiece, adorned with lights and ornaments instead of Christmas trees. This custom began on the Greek Islands where sailors were often away from home for long periods of time. To celebrate the men’s safe return, locals decorated boats and placed them on the floor next to the fireplace, with bows pointed inwards to symbolize the journey home. Some neighborhoods, usually those closer to the seaside, still observe this tradition which originated from, and still underscores, the connection between Greece and the sea.

THE PROVENCE REGION OF SOUTHERN FRANCE HAS A LONG-STANDING CHRISTMAS TRADITION OF SANTONS AND THE NATIVITY SCENE.

The "santon" is a purely Provençal creation that totally integrates into the Christmas Holiday traditions. The Provençal word "santoun" means "little saint". The santon are generally described as being naive and comical, familiar but dignified, little figurines which are placed in quaint settings that delight both children and adults.

The first ever santon came from Marseille; the oldest mould being that of Lagnel. It is exhibited at the Museum of Old Marseille (the Maison Diamantée).

The Nativity Scene is the epitome of all scenes featuring the santon. All santon are cast first in an original mould representing many different, popular Provençal figures. Each santon-maker creates some figurines by taking inspiration from folklore and tradition, such as the shepherd proffering the lamb, reminding us to share, and the woman with the black hen, whose bouillon was recommended for newborns.

Santon are generally made of plaster rather than resin. The santon-makers paint with gouache the lighter colours, such as the face, then the darker ones. The figures are sculpted based on the Maurel pastorale; some villages add characters, according to their own history. Some of them can be dressed in costumes, primarily representing various trades and professions of the 19th Century. All these figures take their place around the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the three wise men, who are only put in place on January 6th each year.

THE FARMERS SANTA PARADE CELEBRATED ITS 91st YEAR THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON IN AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland's grandest and most cherished holiday tradition, the Farmers Santa Parade, now in its 91st year, marks the official start of the Christmas Season.

As the largest annual community event in Auckland, New Zealand, the Farmers Santa Parade has delighted locals and visitors alike for generations, making this as a much-anticipated holiday and family tradition.  With over 4,000 participants, performers, and dedicated volunteers, this parade represents the heart and soul of Auckland, bringing people together to celebrate the wonder and magic of the Season.

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THE MET CLOISTERS: THE USA'S ONLY MUSEUM EXCLUSIVELY DEVOTED TO THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES©

 

The Cloisters, a branch of the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art fondly called "The Met", overlooks the picturesque Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park located in Upper Manhattan. The Museum derives its name from the portions of five Medieval cloisters incorporated into a modern museum structure.

The Cloisters' story begins with George Grey Barnard (1863-1938), a rather colourful character. A student of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Barnard himself was a prominent American sculptor.

HISTORY OF THE MET CLOISTERS MUSEUM

While working in rural France, Barnard supplemented his income by locating and selling medieval sculpture and architectural fragments that had made their way into the hands of local landowners over several centuries of political and religious upheaval. Barnard also served as a middleman between major Paris dealers and American clients; however, he kept many these confiscated pieces for himself -- a practice that today might cause issues of stolen art and its repatriation to arise.

Upon moving back to the United States just prior to World War I, Barnard opened to the public a church-like brick structure located in Upper Manhattan on Fort Washington Avenue filled with his Collection—the first installation of Medieval art and architectural artifacts in America, which he named George Grey Barnard's Cloisters. Although Barnard proudly displayed his own personal collection of Medieval art and architectural artifacts, the Collection was not properly curated so that it could be presented in a historically accurate context.

Vintage photo of the Interior of 
Barnard's Cloisters, circa 1925

This lack of historical continuity and perspective was counterproductive to his fervent goal of enabling Americans to see and learn about art from the Middle Ages, and especially young American sculptors whom he hoped would be inspired by what he called "the patient Gothic chisel." Instead, it expressed Barnard's poetic and very personal interpretation of the Middle Ages, but nevertheless, was a ground-breaking and influential installation because it was the first ever display of its type of Medieval art in America.

Enter John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

When Barnard's Cloisters was offered for sale in 1924, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960) provided funds that enabled The Metropolitan Museum of Art to purchase the Museum and its Collections. The expert artistry of Medieval art, as well as its innate spirituality, strongly appealed to the philanthropist Rockefeller, who, like many of his contemporaries, possessed a fascination with the past. Consequently, Rockefeller concurrently presented the Museum with more than 40 pieces from his own collection of Medieval works of art -- a gift which enhanced Barnard's original very eclectic, albeit disorganized, Collection which had previously been on display.

By 1927, the Metropolitan Museum of Art decided a larger building was needed for its branch museum – one that would exhibit its Collection in a more scholarly fashion. "With visionary foresight, Rockefeller offered to finance the conversion of 66.5 acres of land just north of Barnard's [original] museum into a public park, known as Fort Tryon Park, with a new Cloisters as its centerpiece". (SIDE NOTE: Fort Tryon Park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm between 1931-1933.)

In order to retain the pastoral setting surrounding the new Cloisters Museum and grounds, and to keep the view from the new Museum pristine, Rockefeller also donated additional parkland to the State of New Jersey along the New Jersey Palisades on the opposite bank of the Hudson River.

Construction began in 1935. Photos documenting the site and construction were taken by Irving Underhill between May 6, 1935 and January 5, 1938, such as the one herein above.

The three men who, together with Rockefeller, gave shape to the present museum were Charles Collens (1873-1956), Joseph Breck (1885-1933), and James Rorimer (1905-1966) -- with Collens being the primary architect. Breck, a curator of decorative arts as well as assistant director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was primarily responsible for the Cloisters' interior design until his untimely death in 1933, after which time Rorimer replaced him.

When The Cloisters finally opened to the public in 1938 in the middle of the Great Depression, the finished Museum resembled a French Romanesque abbey, while not replicating any one particular Medieval building or setting, but instead designed to evoke the general architecture of the later Middle Ages. The Cloisters creates an integrated and harmonious context in which visitors can experience the rich tradition of medieval artistic production, including metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles.

THE THREE CLOISTER GARDENS

The Cloisters is also renowned for its three Cloister Gardens – Cuxa, Bonnefont, and Trie. Designed as an integral feature when the Museum opened in 1938, the Gardens enhance the setting in which the Museum's collection of medieval art is displayed and create an understanding of medieval life.

Planted in the reconstructed Romanesque and Gothic cloisters, each of the three Gardens re-creates those that provided sustenance and spiritual refreshment within a traditional Medieval monastery. The Judy Black Garden in the Cuxa Cloister is designed in the typically Medieval plan with a fountain set at the center of crossed paths which divide this Garden into quadrants, each with a grass plot and a pollarded crab apple tree.

The "Medieval pleasure garden", with its borders of plants chosen for beauty and fragrance, is the ancestor of present day ornamental gardens.  In winter, the arcades are glassed in, and the interior walkway becomes a conservatory filled with tender plants such as date palm, orange, rosemary, and bay. 

The raised beds of the Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden hold one of the most specialized plant collections in the world. The foundation of its plant list is a 9th Century edict of the Emperor Charlemagne designating 89 species to be grown on his estates. This list has been supplemented by herbals and monastic records, as well as archaeological evidence. The Cloisters' collection is based on the more than 400 species of plants known and used in the Middle Ages, some of which were grown in gardens, while various herbs were gathered from the wild, and exotic spices such as black pepper and ginger were imported in dried form.  Plants in this Garden are also grouped and labeled according to their Medieval use, whether in cooking, medicine, art, industry, housekeeping, or magic.  Near the south wall of Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden, is an orchard of lady apples and other medieval fruits such as medlar, quince, currants, and elderberries. Orchards were associated with monasteries, manor houses, and parks, and were often enclosed to keep out thieves.   The third of the three Met Cloister Gardens, Trie Cloister Garden, evokes the idealized gardens and landscapes of the Middle Ages. The joy the Medieval world felt upon the return of the Spring season each year was expressed in their verdant, millefleur tapestries, allegorical poems, and paintings. The plantings in this "Medieval fantasy garden" are inspired by that much-loved Medieval setting, the enameled mead or flowering meadow. Much more reflective of the wildness of nature, the Medieval world's exuberant vision of nature is evident in this Garden as well as in the famous Unicorn Tapestries' myriad of flowers and fruits which is part of The Met's Collection. 

In 1974, The Met Cloisters received City Landmark Designation from the City of New York. The most recent renovation of the Museum, completed in 2009, has been of the Late Gothic Hall, which included the conservation of windows from the Dominican monastery in Sens and the return to public view of a monumental tapestry from Burgos Cathedral.

Primary Sources: metmuseum.org/The Cloisters; nylandmarks.org; Cloisters Archives Collection

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