Boas Festas e Feliz Natal

For me Christmas and the Holiday Season is drifting snow, ice skating on the pond, sledding in the park, and jack frost nipping at your nose. My ideal Holiday landscape is filled with mounds of snow and huge feathery snowflakes filling the sky. Maybe its just a visual conceit but I'm not imgaging Christmas here on the streets of São Paulo.

But what do Paulistas know or care about my wintery northern predisposition? What do they care about snow?

When walking through the streets during the day we are easily distracted away from anything having to do with the festive world of Christmas. Patricia would probably agree, here in Brazil there is as much less retail and commercial hysteria around Christmas buying than in the U.S.

My sense is Black Friday has not struck Brazil for the primary reason they don't celebrate Thanksgiving (see earlier November 29th post on "how to" explain Thanksgiving to Brazilians) or mark the day after for shopping frenzy with 4AM box store openings. Additionally, retailers don't seem to pin all their hopes for success on the last three weeks of the year and the Christmas buying binge. Life is more meaningful than that here in Brazil.

However, when the sun goes down, São Paulo is transformed into a dazzling array of lights and building costumes. Along Ave. Paulista building facades become giant trees and ornaments for hanging lights and bulbs. Already baroque styled buildings painted in bright pastel and rich earthen colours get draped in cloth like ornamental tables in the Holiday dining-room.


All along the avenues and between the boulevards, indistiquishable grey cement forms and harsh wire mesh that fail to delight amidst the visual pollution and graffiti during the day, pop out with gusto and become magnificent glimmering light displays at night. The drumbeats of traffic and squeals of motor-boys horns as they make their deliveries is replaced by the bells of Natal.

After a walk in Ibirapuera Park, Patricia and I went into the highly secure upscale neighborhood of Vila Nova and behind the locked gates and priavte security guard was this little orament with the words "Let It Snow" inscribed on a banner above the head of a Christmas elf. Patricia and I had to laugh. It will never, in a million years, snow in São Paulo on Christmas!

But there is always the dream...

BOAS FESTAS (HAPPY HOLIDAYS) and FELIZ NATAL (MERRY CHRISTMAS) to all our family and friends who have been reading our travel blog since the beginning of December. We've truly enjoyed sharing this journey with you and our impressions of São Paulo, Brazil. We hope you will except this as our Holiday letter and greeting and our wish for a healthy and prosperous New Year!