Christmas in Brazil

It is against my instincts to get into the holiday spirit as temperatures soar toward 100° F rather than stubbornly hiding out below freezing. There were no fireplaces or snowmen. No evergreens. Just palms. No eggnog, just cachaça. And the only steam coming from cookies was due to extreme humidity.

But thanks to a Brazilian obsession with American culture, it was impossible to escape the northern December images. In fact, in the month preceding Christmas, I was dispirited to see that Brazil’s ideas of Christmas are largely imported from Hollywood. Tan women wearing sleeveless lightweight dresses and sandals stream through the entrances of heavily air-conditioned malls decorated inside and out by sparkling snowflakes, trees, and the well-known north pole residents. Sweaty shoppers stroll past storefronts decorated by images of happy Christian families frolicking through snow in mittens. I imagine kids coming in from days at the beach to be bombarded by Hollywood’s colossal collection of Christmas films on TV.

But as much as the American images wouldn’t leave me alone, come the 24th, I’d recognized some authenticity – some Brazilian spice in the Christmas punch. Outside of the commercial world of shopping malls, storefronts, and TV, Christmas in Rio de Janeiro is nothing like it is in the USA. If anything, it’s more like the Fourth of July.