Spending holidays far away from family and friends can be painful. At this stage in my life, birthdays, Easter, President’s Day, and the like don’t carry much significance. Christmas, and to a lesser extent Thanksgiving, on the other hand exert an irresistible pull back to Northeast Ohio. This is due mainly to the fact that my family and many friends converge on the area for a few days before and after Christmas. Small traditions have emerged, like the show at the Grog Shop on Christmas night and the Welcome Home parties in Tremont. The brutal Northeast Ohio winter provides a white backdrop that seems eminently bearable as compared to, say, the typical mid-February whiteout. The Northeast Ohio holiday experience contrasts sharply with life in Jakarta, Indonesia, with its balmy weather and population that’s relatively indifferent to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Despite Jakarta’s weak enabling environment, I’ve managed to stay festive this holiday season.
Thanksgiving is the American holiday that exports the best. The concept of gathering with family and friends to eat and give thanks resonates in any culture. And as I’ve experienced it recently, Thanksgiving has minimal religious undertones. People of all faiths can gather together and give thanks without any pretense of grandstanding or awkwardness. I wasn’t planning on doing anything for Thanksgiving this year. I would be traveling for work and would only get back to Jakarta late on Thanksgiving Day, and I don’t even have access to an oven. To my surprise, I had the good fortune of being invited to two Thanksgiving celebrations, both hosted by American friends.
The first, held on the Friday following Thanksgiving, was hosted by a friend with roots in the North Carolina and Washington, DC areas. By coincidence, his parents happened to be in town on a visit, and so they went to great lengths to prepare an extensive, completely authentic Thanksgiving spread. This included proper biscuits, turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, cranberry sauce, and three pies: traditional pumpkin pie, a pumpkin cheesecake and pecan pie. Although the evening’s conversation was somewhat colored by the exhortations of a French guest that Jakarta – and most other places in the world outside of Paris, New York and Buenos Aires – lacks “a soul,” the guests and I were deeply touched by the extraordinary efforts of our hosts. I left feeling that this was the next best thing to being back with family in Northeast Ohio.
The second Thanksgiving feast took place the following evening, and was hosted by an American couple that had recently relocated to Indonesia from the United States with three young children. Needless to say, they were in no position to prepare the meal by themselves, and instead enlisted the support of caterers from the American Club. The food didn’t live up to the extremely high standards set by the preceding evening’s feast. Nevertheless, my spirits were lifted by the couple’s gesture to include me in their Thanksgiving celebration. Having taken part in two Thanksgivings for the first time did much to compensate for spending the holiday far away from home, family and friends.
The build-up to Christmas in Jakarta has thus far been inauspicious. Although Indonesia has a Christian minority that celebrates the holiday, Christmas doesn’t figure prominently in the public consciousness aside from a vague sense of unease or embarrassment stemming back to a series of church bombings that occurred in cities across the country on Christmas Eve in 2000. The purely commercial version of Christmas has taken firm hold here, however. Christmas trees began springing up in malls and apartment buildings several weeks ago. Outside of malls and other places of commerce there are few, if any, outward signs that the holiday is approaching.
Never the type to be deterred, the same friends who hosted the Thanksgiving gatherings are arranging an “orphan” Christmas celebration for those that will be sticking around Jakarta. I’m sure this will be another massive success, and at some level I’m sorry to be missing it. On the other hand, I’m ecstatic to have the opportunity to travel back to Northeast Ohio for Christmas. Jakarta-Manila-Tokyo-Detroit-Cleveland is a long, tedious trip, but certainly worthwhile. A bootleg copy of A Christmas Story will do much to get me in the proper Northeast Ohio Christmas mindset.
