Truly (were) Happy Holidays

Vahe H Apelian

The end of the calendar year ends a few days before or after Christmas, according to the Gregorian calendar which is accepted world wide. According to Wikipedia, the Gregorian calendar is widely adopted globally, with only a few countries like Ethiopia, Nepal, Iran, and Afghanistan using alternative calendars.

Courtesy Ziad Sami Itani 

Gregorian calendar is also used in the United States where the greetings marking the season, if not often, but surely at times  are engineered if not weaponized to  become a political issue with statements such as  «it it is not Happy Holidays but Merry Christmas». 

In Lebanon it was a truly Happy Holidays period. All the Lebanese, in my days, celebrated the end of year, often blurred with Christmas celebration.  The shops were decorated, some with pine trees, so were many household, whether Christian or Moslem. The Christians used to place a nativity scene under the tree. 

The last year of the year was the most festive evening when families got together to celebrate the end of the year. At precisley midnight, we put off the lights in the house and immediately after flicked it on signaling the end of the year and the beginning of the new year. Greeting were exchanged at that moment among the family members, relatives, friends who were present at the evening's celebration.

The holiday gifts were exchanged and were opened at the new year, not on Christmas Day. The Maronites, the largest Christian minority in Lebanon adhered to the Catholic Church observed and  celebrated Christmas on December 25. The Armenians observed and celebrated Christmas on January 6. Greek Orthodox, if my recollection serves me well, observed and celebrated Christmas not on January 6, but some other date. Lebanon was truly a mosaic of different denominations.

At midnight it was also customary for the ships to ring their sirenes loud. Lebanon being a maritine country, the ships stationed in the Beirut sea port as well as along the other coastal towns, did the same.  Hotel Lux my father ran was a block or two away from the sea port. The sirenes from the ships were heard loud, almost defeaning.

The last new year eve I spent in Lebanon was in 1975, heralding 1976, the fateful year when I left Lebanon for good. At midnight guns roared. Tracer bullets illuminated the sky. The firing went on for a few minutes, heralding not only the new year but the civil war that would rage for the next fifteen years and whose aftermaths continue to this day.

Yesterday I cam across a posting of Ziad Sami Itani on his Facebook page. With the aid of Google translate, I translated his post and posted it below. 

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Courtesy Ziad Sami Itani facebook  

«This is how Beirut used to live

Christmas atmosphere

Ziad Sami Itani/Greater Lebanon

«Until the recent past, Christmas had its splendor, preparations, joy, and enthusiasm...

The atmosphere of preparing for the holidays that we lived in Beirut, when the holiday had its splendor, was stolen from us and destroyed by the catastrophic economic and living crisis that we are suffering under, in light of the continued drift towards collapse!!!

It is as if we have become enemies of joy, because everything around us calls for crying and regret!!!

In short, this year's holiday will be absent!!!

Where are the Christmas decorations that used to sparkle in the streets of Beirut,

As if at night they embrace the bright stars of the sky!?

Where is "Santa Claus" who used to make children happy by hearing his bell, and their hearts dance with joy for his gifts and a wide smile is drawn on their faces!?

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In the past, weeks before the holidays, Beirut's markets, Hamra Street and the facades of its shops would be adorned with the holiday's decorations, dominated by the colors red and green, which we would wait for from year to year to enjoy the splendor of its colors and lights, whichc  would become radiant and sparkling with different lights that add an atmosphere of joy and love to the souls rejoicing the holiday and its celebrations...

The Christmas tree, decorated and lit with colors and bells, seems to be the master of the situation, always ready wherever the eyes fall, accompanied by Fairuz's voice in the song "Eid Night" as if trying to slow down the speed of the city and its people who seem in a hurry to welcome the glorious occasion with the best they have...

In the Christmas season, shops of all kinds, from clothes, perfumes and gifts, were ready for the occasion, because it was customary for family and friends to exchange gifts in celebration, so you see them crowded with customers who awere keen to buy the most beautiful and most  distinguished, to give it to their loved ones, and in preparation to put it under the Christmas tree in homes to suggest to children that "Santa Claus" brought it to them ...

During the Christmas period, parents would take their children to the commercial center of Beirut to see and watch the decorations, where all kinds of illuminated decorations were place. Al-Hamra Street was also dressed up like the markets in the center of the country, with its holiday decoratons.  Down towards Bliss Street, it was necessary to stop at the wall of the American University, whose administration was keen to decorate one of the giant, long-lived trees with Christmas decorations every year, using a fire truck to reach the top. It was a station for watching and taking pictures.

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Thus, everyone was anticipating Christmas and preparing for it to celebrate it, as Christmas, like other religious holidays and occasions, brought together all people, young and old, in the city of love, coexistence, diversity and variety, which is full of life, amidst an overwhelming joy that cannot be described.

Today, the joy of the holiday- Eid - is no longer present except in the wrinkles of time and in the painful memories.

They killed the joy and happiness inside us! Even if every day a holiday comes and another holiday takes its place, joy cannot revive our dead, worn-out hearts... a second time!!!»