Christmas in the City

As you might imagine, Christmas in Spain is a bit different from the US. Instead of trimming the tree and waiting for St. Nick, Spaniards construct elaborate belenes, or nativity scenes, in their living rooms and write letters to their favorite of the three reyes, or kings, asking for gifts on January 6th. There are no Salvation Army Santas ringing bells, no carolers singing, and not even that many shoppers rushing home with their presents—at least not for a couple weeks. In Madrid there’s almost never any snow, and there’s certainly no eggnog.

Nevertheless, Madrid has its own way of getting into the Christmas spirit. The city’s tourism board even puts out a program listing music, shows, and other events, plus where to see historic and artistic belenes around town and information on the January 5th parade welcoming the kings to town. And then there are the lights. As Spain’s largest city, you can bet they do it up, but of course there’s a purpose: lest we forget there’s an economic crisis, the brochure reminds us that the lights help encourage commerce and boost employment. Plus, they’re energy efficient.

Politics aside, the decorations are indeed impressive. The most important streets’ lights are designed by famous artists, architects, fashion designers and the like. The giant cone of lights in the Puerta del Sol, the heart of the city, is unmistakably the work of Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, with its whimsical hearts and stars. Madrid-based architect Ben Busche designed the lights for Gran Via last year, to celebrate the emblematic street’s 100^th birthday.

Christmas lights may not be so unique, but the Madrid does have its particularities during the holidays. The Christmas market in the Plaza Mayor is famous but, I have to say, mediocre. It mostly offers belén figurines of varying quality and cheesy decorations including Santas climbing ropes to hang on your balcony (because no-one has a fireplace, so how else is Santa going to get your presents to you?). And then there’s the most Christmas-y merchandise of all, with, as of last year, its own, separate market in the Plaza Santa Cruz: joke items like items like crazy, colorful wigs, scary masks, and whoopee cushions. Yes, that’s right: if it seems like something more appropriate for Halloween or April Fool’s, the best time to find it is at Christmas. The wigs, seasonal hats and reindeer antlers are especially popular (unfortunately, so are noisemakers—WHY do parents buy these for their kids??), and people walk around the center wearing them, doing their shopping like nothing is unusual. It’s pretty strange.

Another Madrid quirk is something called Cortilandia, an animatronics display on the back side of the El Corte Inglés department store. Every year there’s a different theme and the around-the-world motif for 2010 made it seem more like A Small World than ever. (My favorite theme was the zoo, with Jesus in the manger in a cage.) Of course, it being Spain, some of the nationalities were depicted in ways that could never be shown in the US: couldn’t they have given the Chinese, Japanese, and Inuit characters almond-shaped eyes instead of slanty ones? And of course it’s all publicity for the store. At the end of the show, narrated this year by the goddess Cybele, in the form of Madrid’s most famous fountain, everyone sings the Cortilandia song and is reminded to visit the toy department. Subtle.

And it wouldn’t be Christmas without lines around the block to get lottery tickets. December 22^nd is the day of the annual Sorteo de Navidad (Christmas lottery), and people go nuts for it. I have a hard time getting into the spirit of buying a €20 lottery ticket that’s worth one tenth of the prize. I feel like I might as well just take a lighter to a €20 note. But I’m not Spanish, and apparently they don’t see it that way because it’s 100% part of the Christmas tradition. As early as summer, bars will start selling shares of numbers they’ve bought, and starting in November people flock to the lottery purveyors that have doled out winning numbers in the past. The lines for branches in the Puerta del Sol and on Gran Via are unbelievable, and yet, people wait.

Kids from the San Ildefonso school, in Madrid’s La Latina neighborhood, practice for months to learn the protocol and “sing” the numbers just right. On the big day, every bar, lobby, and living room shows the televised drawing, which lasts three and a half hours. There’s a big cage filled with ticket numbers, and a little cage filled with prize amounts. Most of the prizes are €1000, but there are a few big prizes, including “El Gordo” (literally, the fat one), which is worth €3 million. The kids sing every single one of the numbers and prizes in a certain, repetitive way that gets burned onto your brain and stays there for the rest of the week.

Each pair of kids sings enough numbers to fill a “board,” which consists of 10 rows of 20 numbers; at the end of each row they sing in a special way, elongating the vowels in “euros.” If they call a big prize, they have to bring it to a jury, which confirms and then officially announces the amount; the kids return to their spot singing the numbers three more times. Since it’s easier to understand if you see it, here’s a video:

Of course it’s a big deal for the kid who calls El Gordo, who’s interviewed after the fact by all the media outlets. During the drawing, commentators say insipid things like, “Oh, how cute, his tie is bothering him,” or “They’re going fast this year,” or “Andrea is the sister of the girl who called El Gordo two years ago.” They also like to talk about which provinces the prizes fall in, what numbers the tickets end in… It’s all pretty superstitious. If a ticket weren’t so expensive I’d participate, but it’s fun to at least watch from afar.

Despite these quirks, in the end Christmas is the same as in the States: a time to be with family. And with that in mind I’m off to Pamplona to spend the holiday with Iñigo’s family…