Merry Christmas! Christmas Morning, HanoiYou’d think those wouldn’t go together. Christmas Morning. Hanoi. But here I am in the middle of it. I’m alone. The sky has gone from high and clear and fresh and moist to heavy and the wind’s come up. Howling actually. I know that, just out of site from my perch on the bed with the computer, that the palm fronds are thrashing, just like they did outside my third floor window in Hassell Hall, my first semester at HDA in 1968. They’re mesmerizing but I no more associate them with Christmas now than I did then. We New Englander and Rocky Mountain types forget that most of the Christendom, by far most, celebrates Christmas as snow-free and generally green. If they celebrate it at all.
But right now–in Hanoi–from my bed I see a grey, lowering sky. I’m listening to the wind barreling. Hunkered down in my bed I’m cosy. I’m also listening to Christmas music. (If you’ve not heard Sarah McLachlan’s Christmas album from two or three years ago, rush out and by it–it’s the best Christmas music in twenty years–listen to “Song for a Winter’s Night.”) I can see my six-foot cone-shaped object glittering silver and blue in the living room (I’ve always had a live tree, but this year beggars in a 90% Buddhist country can’t be choosers and I got my (Xmas Decoration, “Giam Gia!”) from the leprous, emaciated male-model Santa mannequin with the cotton candy beard taped on. I could swear he winked.
So, with the wind and now the rain tapping the windows, and the pinion incense burning in the room, and my cup of Ca Phe Sua (Java from Java) it feels like Christmas. Could just as well be a snowstorm outside with this grey light and cool draft.
Last night two students and their families and I gathered for a fine, hot Indian meal at Tandoor (I had my favorite Goa Fish Curry) in the Old District and I wandered for an hour through the crowds for the Midnight Mass. On the East side of Ho Hoan Kiem (the beautiful lake in the middle of the downtown) was a massive sound stage filling the choked streets with lights and performers and fender-to-fender, front-wheel-to-tail-pipe motorbikes loaded with families and couples. On the West side of the lake and a block back sits the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, of the arch-diocese of Hanoi: a very Christmas-oriented church. Many of the roughly 5% of the population of the Red River Delta who are Roman Catholic Christians gathered in, and around, the Gothic-Revival Cathedral, the Place and the surrounding glittering streets and alleys of this handsome, golden French Colonial neighborhood to celebrate. The evening ended with lights off on the sound stage and doors closed in the Cathedral. And streets intimately shared by hundreds of thousands of people heading out of the center. Miraculously I found a cab and made it home shortly after midnight. And slept deeply and joyfully.
I can see into the future, but only twelve hours. Looking good. Have a fine fresh, lively, green spirit-blown, Christmas.
