The call went out two weeks ago to send in your photos for a seasonal gallery. It did not specify whether indoors or outdoors. I wondered what would predominate: lights strung over shopping streets, Christmas markets, lights in house windows, Santa, the Holy Family, yuletide wreathes and Christmas trees?
Different cultural strands
Each of these represents a different cultural strand, different ways of celebrating the tilt of our planet as it circles the sun that causes the different seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres to turn on 21 December.
In the northern hemisphere, we feel the need to celebrate in the depths of winter, using lights and evergreen foliage to remind us that soon we will have more sunlight and warmth and green plants will grow again through the unfrosted soil. In the southern hemisphere, it is the hottest season. Time to eat outdoors, perhaps with roasting meat under lights dangling from flowering trees. No bleak mid-winter there, as the crowds that can, flock to the beaches.
But what is common to both hemispheres is the frantic shopping for gifts. So the shops and market stalls will be piled high with goods, toys, electronics, clothes. Nowadays, the commercial cycle turns on the same dates because many of the supply chains come from the same factories.
Who brings gifts to the children?
There may be different traditions of who brings the gifts for children. When I lived in South Africa, I never saw a Father Christmas with a black face, although the Santa brand looms large over shopping worldwide in this season.
Crowds flock to churches in Africa, and in the Caribbean, where there are strong traditions of families parading to church in festive finery before going home to feast.
Image by Frank Gaertner, licensed by Shutterstock (sd)
Nativity scenes with different complexions
Churches all over the world tend to follow the example of St. Francis and display a model Nativity scene, usually with figurines kept from year to year. Children will also act out the Nativity.
I loved this opportunity for my (mixed race) children to play angels as it used to perplex them that there were no black angels on Christmas cards in those days. At least the three wise men are traditionally from different continents, with different complexions.
Yule and the Christmas tree
Putting a Christmas tree in a church has nothing to do with any Christian story, but is a cultural revival from the Yule celebrations of northern Europe, made fashionable when Queen Victoria and her German husband put up a Christmas tree in their palace. Such evergreen species of tree is mostly unobtainable in Africa, so the lights have to dangle from other bushes or trees, or simply along the balconies and verandahs, of family homes.
Coloured lights
What seems to unite both northern and southern hemisphere seasonal celebration is that coloured lights are now ubiquitous, the signal that the time for celebration has arrived, the time for giving gifts, for wearing new clothes, and feasting. Significantly most of the gallery of photos below feature these coloured lights.
The Kent and Surrey Bylines team is now taking a holiday break, planning to publish again after January 5, which is actually our five years anniversary. However you celebrate the festive season, we wish you warmth, joy and hope in abundance!
