Home for the holidays

In a couple of days my husband and I will board a plane for the States, where we'll visit friends and celebrate the Christmas holidays with my family. It'll be the first time in three years that we're back in the USA for Christmas, and I can't wait.

Not that I don't enjoy the holiday season here in Belgium. The old Flemish cities are at their picturesque best this time of year, with all the Christmas greenery and lights. Christmas markets are sprouting up everywhere, and I've already drunk my fill of mulled wine, whipped cream-topped hot chocolate and flavored jenevers at Hasselt's Winterland, which is like a sugar-fueled, Santa-themed carnival on acid.

Hasselt's Winterland

But there's something special about Christmas in America, and it's just not the same here. No other holiday comes close in terms of nostalgia, anticipation, excitement and excess. Christmas isn't only the biggest holiday of the year—it's the one that is most closely bound up with our childhood memories, our family dynamics, and our favorite rituals, whether religious or secular.

Of course, there are all the negatives: the commercialism, the expectations, the disappointment. Everyone complains about the pressure to buy more (and more expensive) gifts. The stress of attending all those holiday parties and managing holiday schedules. The powder keg of emotions that any family gathering inevitably becomes... and the depression that can easily take hold when the reality of the holidays doesn't match our dreams.

But that's the dark side of a holiday that's all about light. For most Americans, Christmas is about getting together with our loved ones and sharing a meal while dressed in our prettiest party clothes. It's about decorating the house, putting up the tree, and hanging up ornaments that have been carefully collected over the years. It's about listening to Christmas carols on the radio, even the ones we claim to hate. It's about finding the perfect gift for your favorite aunt, and sending Christmas cards the old-fashioned way, by mail.

Christmas tree in the Grand Place, Brussels

I've found that Christmas in Belgium doesn't have the same emotional pull for people here. Children have Sinterklaas on December 6, when they receive special treats and presents. That's the holiday most people associate with cherished childhood memories. Traditionally, families would go to church on Christmas eve, eat dinner together and maybe open presents. It just wasn't a big deal. It seems that many of the Christmas traditions now seen in Belgium have been imported from Germany, England or America in recent years.

This year, I'm looking forward to my family's Christmas traditions: We'll dress up and go to church on Christmas Eve, and then my aunt will host a party afterwards with cocktails, egg nog and lots of food. On Christmas morning, we'll open our stockings (stuffed with small gifts and treats from “Santa”) in our pajamas, and then get dressed for a late breakfast. After breakfast, we'll open the piles of presents under the tree. Later we'll go for a winter walk on the beach before starting on dinner preparations.

Christmas dinner will be a formal affair with fancy dishes and the good silver. It will be followed by a Christmas pudding (purchased at the English shop in Brussels and brought over on the plane) crowned with a holly sprig, doused in brandy and lit on fire. Everyone will be slightly tipsy by then and we'll finish by pulling our crackers and reading the bad jokes while wearing paper crowns. (NB: many of our Christmas traditions are British, since my family is from England.)

My family's Christmas table

Last year, we went to my Flemish in-laws' house on Christmas Day for a family dinner. It was very relaxed and not so different from other family gatherings. We didn't exchange presents. But there are a few Christmas traditions that I refuse to give up, even here in Belgium. I insisted on having stockings for myself and my husband (even though I had to fill both of them myself). I drove my husband crazy by playing Christmas music for weeks. And I decorated our Christmas tree with the ornaments I've been collecting for over 20 years, which were among the few things I brought with me from America.

Getting married in Belgium, Part II

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about my wedding, which took place last summer. I always meant to write another post about getting married here but somehow never got around to it--until now. Since our one-year anniversary is just around the corner, I figured I shouldn't wait any longer to write it!

One of the strangest things for me (as an American) to wrap my head around was the Belgian custom of inviting different people to different wedding events.

Where I come from, a wedding is considered a single event comprised of different activities, to which all guests are invited and expected to attend. The usual sequence goes something like this: wedding service (civil or religious) followed by wedding reception, either at the same venue or a different location. The reception usually involves drinks (champagne), then a formal dinner, and finally dancing.

The creation of the guest list is a complicated and tortuous affair, made even more difficult by budget concerns when providing dinner and drinks for everyone on the list. The final guest list has to include a carefully calibrated mixture of close friends, casual friends, immediate family, distant relatives, co-workers and professional acquaintances of both the bride and the groom, and perhaps the parents as well.

Here in Belgium, it is customary to have a different guest list for each wedding activity. For instance, pretty much everyone is invited to attend the civil ceremony; there's no cost to the couple and because it takes place in a public venue (at city hall) anyone can show up and watch. On the other hand, if there's going to be another ceremony (in a church) only close friends and family might be invited and expected to attend. In general, people outside the couple's immediate circle are happy to skip the church ceremony.

Then there might be two or three different celebratory events after the ceremony (or ceremonies). First, a champagne reception for the people invited to the church ceremony. Then a formal dinner for just the immediate family and closest friends. And finally an evening party with music and dancing for the wider circle of friends, acquaintances and other relatives. (At the evening party, there will often be a casual buffet served late in the evening with sandwiches or snacks.)

Breaking the wedding up into different events (sometimes taking place over two or more days) has two advantages: First of all, you can tailor the guest list to the event, limiting the more intimate events to your inner circle of family and friends and including everyone else in a big dance party. Secondly, it saves money since you're not expected or obliged to provide a formal, sit-down dinner to all of your guests--which is often the biggest wedding expense. It's a very practical system.

However, I just couldn't do it. To me it felt rude to exclude some of my guests from certain events. I couldn't bring myself to invite people to my wedding service and then tell them to get lost for a few hours while I went to a nice dinner with my family and closest friends, even though my husband assured me that no Belgian would take offense.

In the end, because our second ceremony took place in the same location (an old, renovated farmhouse) where we had the reception and party, it didn't make sense to break up the guest list anyway. Everyone who came to the ceremony stayed for the champagne reception, sit-down dinner and dancing. And because I had family and friends coming from the United States and England, having our guests spend the whole day together gave everyone the chance to get to know each other.

Some of our Belgian friends couldn't make it to the ceremony since it was on a Friday afternoon and they had to work, so they just showed up during dinner. I found that strange. In America, either you come to the wedding or you don't. You don't accept part of the invitation and you definitely don't skip the wedding ceremony itself. I'm pretty sure Emily Post would not approve, but then she's not Belgian.

I was used to thinking of the wedding ceremony as the most important part of the wedding and my job as guest was to witness and support the couple during this momentous and romantic event. Here, the ceremony is considered a boring formality, and the guest's role is to help celebrate afterwards. Perhaps this is because civil and Catholic weddings tend to be rather formulaic and impersonal, whereas we Americans put a lot of emphasis on customizing the wedding ceremony to reflect the couple's personality and beliefs.

In the end, our wedding day was a reflection of our marriage and ourselves: a combination of American and Belgian influences and traditions. The civil ceremony was in Dutch and the religious ceremony was in English. We sang songs and had readings in both languages. We served Flemish food for dinner and had an American-style tiered wedding cake. The DJ played both Belgian and American music, and the dance floor was full all night long.

It was everything I wanted our wedding to be, and it was perfect.

Carnaval time in Flanders!

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian season of Lent, a period of penitence and fasting leading up to Easter. In New Orleans, Louisiana, the day before Ash Wednesday is celebrated with Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday” in French)--North America's only indigenous Carnival. In our mostly Protestant country, Carnival traditions never took hold anywhere else.

Here in Catholic Belgium, Carnaval (spelled slightly differently) is part of the culture. It doesn't seem to be celebrated everywhere, but there are local Carnaval festivities scattered all over the country. The most famous ones are in Aalst (Flanders) and Binche (Wallonia). Where I live, in Limburg province, there is a long history of Carnaval traditions which are tied to the neighboring regions of Dutch Limburg and the German Rhineland.

 On Monday, I experienced my first Flemish Carnaval in my husband's home village. Vroenhoven is located just over the border from Maastricht, which is probably the Netherlands' most famous Carnaval city, boasting the most outrageous parties and parades. Most of the villages in the area have their own home-grown Carnaval parade, led by local organizations who elect a Prince of Carnaval every year.

This year, the Vroenhoven stoet (“parade” in the local dialect) was organized together with the parade in Wolder, the Dutch village on the other side of the canal separating Belgium from the Netherlands. The joint parade started in one village and then made its way over the border to the other village and back again. A truly international celebration!

In America, we're used to images of scantily-clad Carnivale dancers in Rio de Janeiro, or slightly-more-covered revelers at Mardi Gras. The reality of Carnaval in Belgium couldn't be more different: Everyone is bundled up against the cold, and the most popular Carnaval accessories are big, funny hats (good for keeping your head warm), and scarves, gloves and legwarmers in traditional Carnaval colors of red, yellow and green.

Carnaval in Vroenhoven has a distinctly rural flavor, with all the parade floats constructed on farm trailers pulled by huge tractors. Each parade float had its own theme, with costumed revelers either riding on top or walking alongside. I wasn't prepared for the shower of candy and other goodies that were thrown into the crowd, but the children standing next to me came with big shopping bags which were soon full to bursting.

My husband grew up participating in the parade, wearing a different costume every year from the time he was a wee child. Our two-year-old niece is too young yet, but I look forward to the day when she'll take her place in the annual Carnaval parade. And next year, I'll be sure to bring a big bag so that I can help her gather up the candy.

Get that baby a borrel!

I recently attended my first baby borrel, a party given by the parents a few months after the birth of a Flemish child. (A borrel is a drink so it's basically a party to toast the arrival of said baby.) Apparently they can range from rather modest affairs to all-out extravaganzas, much like a wedding. This one fell into the latter category.

It was held not at the family's house but at a rented hall, for reasons that became apparent once I saw how many people had been invited. There were easily a hundred family members and friends, with their children, present. Like a wedding, there was a bar serving beer, wine and soft drinks. The room was filled with long tables decorated in theme colors, and there was a table for presents.

The baby in his carriage, along with his parents, was stationed by the entrance to welcome his guests. He seemed unperturbed by all the attention. An uncle hovered nearby, ready with his camera to take pictures of everyone. After admiring the baby and congratulating the parents, guests seated themselves at the tables with other friends, co-workers and family members.

An even longer table held a stupendous array of cakes and sweets, with a couple of token trays stacked with fancy sandwiches. Hardly anyone touched the sandwiches. Like everyone else, I went straight for the cake. Fancy decorated cakes made with sponge cake and layers of buttercream and whipped cream. There were bundt cakes, different types of vlaai (a kind of pie), two kinds of chocolate mousse, tiramisu served in individual glasses, and cookies.

For the kids, there was a separate table where they could decorate mini-cupcakes and cake pops. There was a clown making balloon animals and someone else doing face painting.

The father circulated throughout the room with a tray of little plastic shot glasses containing limoncello and a very strong local liqueur made from sour cherries--in case the wine and beer weren't enough. In the middle of the afternoon, I might add.

The baby borrel is a relatively new tradition in Flanders. The old custom was for friends and family to come to the hospital to see the baby right after the birth, or to drop by the house in the weeks following. Eventually, the constant stream of visitors got to be too much and someone had the idea to throw one big party where the new baby could be introduced to the family's wider social circle.

Where I come from, we have something called a baby shower (presumably because the mother-to-be is "showered" with gifts). It's usually held 6-8 weeks before the birth and is a more intimate affair, with only a few female relatives and close female friends in attendance. Rather than welcoming a new child, the focus is on preparing and supporting the new mother.

The Flemish, being a deeply pragmatic and cautious people, find it strange that you would have a party for a baby before the birth. After all, things can and do go wrong in the weeks leading up to the delivery, during childbirth, and even afterwards--although no one likes to think about that possibility.

I guess Americans are just naturally optimistic. We would rather act as though everything will be fine--and in most cases, it is. The Flemish, on the other hand, would rather wait a few months and then celebrate once it's clear that everyone really is fine. And once the mother has had a chance to recover a bit and appear in public looking her best!

Getting married in Belgium, Part I

I got married in Belgium this summer (to a Belgian, of course.) In many ways it was just like getting married in the United States: the bride wears a fancy white dress, the groom wears a fancy suit, family and friends come together, there's a big party afterwards. But there are some surprising differences.

Perhaps the main difference is that in Belgium, everyone who gets married has to get married at city hall (stadhuis or gemeentehuis) in the city where they reside. In the United States, you can get married at city hall, in a church, in your parents' back yard, on the beach, or almost anywhere you want. As long as the officiant has the right to perform weddings in the state where the wedding takes place, the wedding is legal.

A few years ago, one of my friends in California got ordained by some Internet church so that she could perform another friend's wedding, which was outdoors at a lovely garden restaurant. I think all she had to do was fill out an online form and pay $20. When it was her turn to get married the following year, her brother did the same thing so that he could officiate at her wedding--this time at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles. All perfectly legal.

This could not happen in Belgium. For a predominantly Catholic country, Belgium takes the separation of church and state very seriously. A priest cannot perform a legal wedding. Put another way, a church wedding (or religious ceremony of any faith) is not legally recognized in Belgium. The only legal way to get married is to have a government official perform the ceremony in a government building.

Many people choose to have a church wedding in addition to the legal wedding, but the church wedding has to take place after the one at city hall--otherwise it's considered illegal. That's right: it's illegal to get married in church unless you've already been married at city hall. Usually the couple and their guests go directly from city hall to the church, but sometimes the second wedding takes place on a different day.

It's also very unusual for the religious ceremony to take place anywhere but in church. Apparently priests don't like to leave their churches, and you just don't find the variety of "officiants" that exist in the U.S. who are available to perform weddings in other venues. You simply don't have a second wedding unless it's a church wedding. There's none of this business with writing your own vows or having theme weddings performed by Elvis or Captain Kirk.

My American family, hearing that there would be a civil ceremony preceding the religious one, said that they'd just as soon skip it and only come to the second ceremony. Where we come from, a wedding at city hall is a sterile, perfunctory affair. One pictures a bland, administrative office with fluorescent lighting and linoleum on the floor, and couples waiting outside in the hallway until their number is called.

Here in Belgium, there's a good chance that city hall is a 600-year-old late Gothic masterpiece, as is the case in Brussels (pictured above), Leuven and Bruges. As residents of Hasselt, we weren't that lucky, but our stadhuis is still quite beautiful, an eighteenth-century former mansion with an imposing brick-and-limestone facade. The room where we got married has a huge marble fireplace, dark wood paneling and brass chandeliers.

We convinced my relatives to come to city hall, assuring them that it would be worth their while. Although brief, the civil wedding had a formality that emphasized the gravity of the proceedings. The Americans in attendance were impressed by the Belgian legal code (which we'd had translated into English) stating, among other things, that the couples' place of residence shall be determined by mutual consent, and the each spouse has the right to pursue a career without the permission of the other.

At the end of the ceremony, we received a small book from the city official with our names and wedding date, the official city stamp, the full text of the marriage law, and pages with spaces to write in the names of up to fourteen children. Fourteen! That's optimistic, but then the Belgians do love children.

Family ties

Belgium is a small country. How small? Less than 12,000 square kilometers, or about the size of Maryland. (Maryland is a small state on the eastern seaboard; you may have heard of it. No? Well, trust me, it exists--I've been there.)

If you've been to Europe then this may not come as a surprise to you. European countries are small, especially compared to the U.S. That makes it very convenient for travelers zooming around Europe on a Eurailpass. But what does that mean for the people living here?

One thing that has really struck me is that if you're Belgian, chances are you live pretty close to your family, the town you grew up in, your childhood friends, the college you went to and all your exes. In fact, everyone you know or ever knew lives within a one- or two-hour drive.

Even by European standards, Belgium is small. And then you consider that Belgium is divided into two language communities and you realize that it's even smaller, since people tend to stay in either Flanders or Wallonia, depending on whether they speak Dutch or French.

This makes for very close family ties and social networks. It's easy to maintain friendships over the years because people don't move around that much. The thing that's really weird to me is that people don't just know their friends' partners but also each others' parents and extended families too.

In the U.S. I hardly ever met my friends' parents or siblings because they usually lived hundreds if not thousands of miles away. I've never been to most of my friends' home towns. Sure, if I knew someone long enough and we were close enough, then eventually I might meet the parents when they came to visit. But not as a rule and only occasionally.

Belgians tend to reserve Sundays for family time. That's when people will drive back to their home town (or village, actually) and have dinner with their parents. It's almost a weekly ritual for some. Everything is closed on Sundays anyway so there's not much else to do. It seems quaint and old-fashioned by American standards, but I think it's nice.