‘Tis the season to be jolly, and as in most industrialized Western countries, that fact is quite evident when you go shopping. There are the usual greens and ribbons and twinkling lights, and the usual fake frost and snow in display windows. Part-time St. Nick’s ring bells outside shops, with their beards awry and their tight Euro-jeans sticking out from under their robes (Santa wears a hooded robe here, instead of the red fur suit that he sports in the States).
Grocery stores stock specialty items, like holiday cookie dough (who knew that there were so many types of Christmas cookies requiring so many different types of dough, most of which are on sale, apparently because the Swiss shun pre-packaged dough, opting instead to grind nuts, sift flour, and bake ten types of cookies without any help from large corporations, thank you very much), and scented toilet paper with reindeer stamped on it. Yes, the paper smells like cinnamon, and yes, it has brown cartoon reindeer frolicking in between cheery “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” greetings (is this stuff sold in the States or England, because I don’t know why else the toilet paper would be greeting bathroom-goers in English? If so, I feel a bit silly that I'm using imported, cinnamon-spiked reindeer TP, but it was on sale, and I was running out.)
On certain appointed dates, stores are open on Sundays. Sunday shopping is a rarity here, a special exception to the rule that Sunday is the Sabbath, a day of rest. Although I spend most of the year wishing that I could buy things on Sundays, Sunday shopping days invariably end up being the Sundays that I least want to spend shopping, due to the frenzy that ensues from all of the Swiss releasing their pent-up Sunday shopping urges in the pre-Christmas carnage.
It's hard to describe, but all I can say is that the feverish crowds are a cross between a sale at Filene’s (for those of you from my college years), Times Square on New Year’s Eve (for my law school-era friends), and a pack of ravenous lions mauling a particularly juicy gazelle (for, er, nature show addicts). There are no big sales or specials, it's just the pleasure of partaking in a rare forbidden pleasure that transforms the normally sedate and orderly Swiss into a rabid mob of Sabbath consumers.
Speaking of forbidden pleasures, there was an “Erotic Fair” the other week, right here in little old Zurich. It was held at one of the biggest convention halls in town, and it spanned an entire weekend (Thanksgiving weekend, actually, so while most of America was eating turkey and watching football, there were many Swiss who spent the weekend testing lube and picking porn). A friend who lives by the convention center said that it was packed the entire time (it wasn’t a Sunday shopping weekend, so people had to seek an alternate forbidden pastime).
In addition to the things I would have expected to be featured at something called “Extasia,” like toys and DVDs and “celebrity” meet-and-greets, there was a live sex show. Yes, a live sex show, and the original intention had been to solicit audience participation, live on stage, with the cameras rolling. The audience participation part was axed, due to morality concerns (live public sex by paid professionals is perfectly fine, but not if it includes upstanding citizens who are otherwise employed). So they were forced to put on a normal sex show, whatever normal might mean, for a non-participatory audience.
I suppose you could say that the convention put the “ho” in “holiday.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). In any case, happy “ho”-lidays from Switzerland.
Grocery stores stock specialty items, like holiday cookie dough (who knew that there were so many types of Christmas cookies requiring so many different types of dough, most of which are on sale, apparently because the Swiss shun pre-packaged dough, opting instead to grind nuts, sift flour, and bake ten types of cookies without any help from large corporations, thank you very much), and scented toilet paper with reindeer stamped on it. Yes, the paper smells like cinnamon, and yes, it has brown cartoon reindeer frolicking in between cheery “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” greetings (is this stuff sold in the States or England, because I don’t know why else the toilet paper would be greeting bathroom-goers in English? If so, I feel a bit silly that I'm using imported, cinnamon-spiked reindeer TP, but it was on sale, and I was running out.)
On certain appointed dates, stores are open on Sundays. Sunday shopping is a rarity here, a special exception to the rule that Sunday is the Sabbath, a day of rest. Although I spend most of the year wishing that I could buy things on Sundays, Sunday shopping days invariably end up being the Sundays that I least want to spend shopping, due to the frenzy that ensues from all of the Swiss releasing their pent-up Sunday shopping urges in the pre-Christmas carnage.
It's hard to describe, but all I can say is that the feverish crowds are a cross between a sale at Filene’s (for those of you from my college years), Times Square on New Year’s Eve (for my law school-era friends), and a pack of ravenous lions mauling a particularly juicy gazelle (for, er, nature show addicts). There are no big sales or specials, it's just the pleasure of partaking in a rare forbidden pleasure that transforms the normally sedate and orderly Swiss into a rabid mob of Sabbath consumers.
Speaking of forbidden pleasures, there was an “Erotic Fair” the other week, right here in little old Zurich. It was held at one of the biggest convention halls in town, and it spanned an entire weekend (Thanksgiving weekend, actually, so while most of America was eating turkey and watching football, there were many Swiss who spent the weekend testing lube and picking porn). A friend who lives by the convention center said that it was packed the entire time (it wasn’t a Sunday shopping weekend, so people had to seek an alternate forbidden pastime).
In addition to the things I would have expected to be featured at something called “Extasia,” like toys and DVDs and “celebrity” meet-and-greets, there was a live sex show. Yes, a live sex show, and the original intention had been to solicit audience participation, live on stage, with the cameras rolling. The audience participation part was axed, due to morality concerns (live public sex by paid professionals is perfectly fine, but not if it includes upstanding citizens who are otherwise employed). So they were forced to put on a normal sex show, whatever normal might mean, for a non-participatory audience.
I suppose you could say that the convention put the “ho” in “holiday.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). In any case, happy “ho”-lidays from Switzerland.
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