Tomorrow is the first day of December, but I wouldn't know it if the desktop calendar on my computer didn't keep insisting--obstinately, and despite all evidence to the contrary--that this is so. The sun is shining, the air is a balmy 72 degrees, and the usual overabundance of holiday cheer, so noxious and gag-inducing in the U.S., is conspicuously lacking. Conspicuously lacking at least to this American girl, who never realized how much she counted on the yearly appearance of mass-produced festive spirit to let her know that Christmas is just around the corner. As many times as I've rolled my eyes at the tinsel and plastic evergreen bedecking supermarkets and drugstore aisles, angrily shut off the car radio at the first jolly strains of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" (I hate contemporary Christmas music--I hate the exclamation points in the title of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," the pseudo-multiculturalism of "Feliz Navidad," and any Christmas song written after 1995; I absolutely to not want to rock around my Christmas tree or hear Celine Dion, James Taylor, or any former American Idol contestant sing a jazz-lite rendition of "Silent Night."), as often as I've railed against Hallmark, Macy's, and shopping mall Santas for ruining the Christmas season, I miss the way America does December.
To be sure, Christmas can be found in Cairo. A few nurseries in the foreigner-heavy Zamalek neighborhood have begun selling potted poinsettias and miniature fake Christmas trees, and we recently hung a string of colored lights left over from Ramadan in our apartment in a vague stab at creating a holidayish atmosphere. But in a country without a) snow, b) Hallmark, or c) a Christian majority, it's hard to believe that Christmas is really on the way. I'll simply have to trust that it is, and that the halls of my homeland are appropriately decked even though I can't see them, and that even as I sit here, children all over the United States of America are getting fat on chocolate advent calendars and mailing anxious requests for iPods to the North Pole.
A Christmas display at a Zamalek supermarket:
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