Christmas in Istanbul

This is the little cardboard Christmas tree I bought on the first day of December.

So we spent Christmas in Istanbul as planned and it ended up being a Christmas I’ll never forget. Every single other Christmas of my life I’ve spent with my family in Victoria, except for the three years I lived in California as a child, but even then, it was “Home Christmas”. So to have my first non-Home-Christmas be not only not at home, but also in a Muslim country, was really a departure from the norm.

We flew from İzmir to İstanbul on the 22nd, and got an airport pickup to take us to the AirBNB apartment we rented in Çukurcuma. My desire for this İstanbul trip was to get a feel for the more normal life there, not the touristy stuff. Çukurcuma was perfect for this. It’s a quietish neighbourhood of narrows streets with loads of vintage clothing, antiques and junk shops. Sophia was in heaven.

We knew we wanted to stay in this neighbourhood because Tobias and I had walked through it on our way to find the wonderful Cafe Susam one night on our first visit. It feels, relatively speaking, very European and hip. And Orhan Pamuk talks about this area a lot in both Istanbul: Memories and the City and The Museum of Innocence. In fact, the actual Museum of Innocence was just a couple blocks down from where we were staying. More on that later.

We were delighted with our little Ottoman house in Çukurcuma.

When I saw this graffiti, I interpreted it as “girly man”. Google says it means “of girls and boys”.

We were delighted with the neighbourhood.

  

(That’s a huge pile of simits, Turkish-style sesame bagels.)

That’s a halı (Turkish carpet)! On the road! That cars drive on!

Sometimes Istanbul looks like any other European capital.

 

We were delighted that the nearby Carrefour grocery store carried pork products. Sophia was delighted with the vintage clothing shops. She bought herself a colourful, multi-layered flamenco-style skirt for 10TL (about 3 Euro, or 4.7 Canadian dollars). You can see it in this shot that I took after the gift opening ritual on Christmas morning:

So basically we were delighted. We spent the 22nd and the 23rd wandering around Beyoglu (the broader area that contains Çukurcuma and the adjacent very cool neighbourhood called Cihangir). We wandered up to the Robinson Crusoe bookstore on Istiklal Caddesi and I bought Sebastian a collection of Edward Lear poems called “Complete Nonsense”.

We made kahvaltı (Turkish breakfast) at home in our kitchen, like this one:

I’m not usually a fan of string cheese, but Turkish string cheese, called dil peyniri, is something special. It has a mild, but present, flavour that’s great for breakfast alongside strongly-flavoured olives.

And we ate lunch and dinner at inexpensive local joints that we found in the book Istanbul Eats. In the long list of must-try Turkish foods that I’d been slowly ticking off, I tried two new ones: ciğer (Turkish-style liver) and kokoreç (lamb’s instestines). Both were delicious.

On the 24th, Sophia and I got an early Christmas present: a workshop in ebru, or marbling, a kind of Turkish painting. We rode the tram to Sultanahmet and spent 2.5 hours with Betul Hanim, the expert marbler.

Here’s Sof ready to start learning ebru.

Here’s Betul doing her first ebru piece. Ebru is hard to explain, but basically you paint a picture using very viscous paints in gelatinous water, and then your transfer the image to a sheet of paper. It’s super weird and fun and fascinating.

This one was my second try at the tulips and my last piece of the day. I was so happy with it, I thought I’d stop and end on a high note.

So that was a nice way to spend Christmas Eve morning, and especially in contrast with the running around/working at the office/last-minute prep and/or negotations that I likely would have been engaged in had I been home in Canada.

That evening, Tobias and I took the kids to the awesome Cafe Susam. When we walked in, we got the onceover from the rest of the clientele. We were the only non-locals, the kids were the only kids. After six months though, we’re used to feeling awkward upon entering a place. The only thing to do is keep on going. So we asked for a table and got one, right in the middle of the cafe. We felt conspicuous, surrounded by this very hip, young and arty, black-wearing Cihangir crowd.

But whatevs! We’re conspicuous! It’s not lethal.

After we ordered drinks and settled in, everyone started ignoring us. By the time our (AWESOME) food came, we were completely blended in. As usual.

Sebastian got fish and chips, Sophia got chicken wings, I got a charcuterie plate, and Toby got pork sausages. Everything was just so beautifully done. When I go to a place at Cafe Susam, I have this feeling like “If only everyone would just show CARE when preparing food, it could always be this good.” I particularly like their frites.

After dinner it was time to head to a Christmas Eve service. I had planned weeks in advance to take the family to the candlelight service at the Union Church located at the Dutch consultate. But at the last minute I had a change of heart. Our AirBNB host had told us about the Catholic service at St. Anthony’s on Istiklal Caddesi (Istanbul’s main shopping street) and said it was very lively and full of all sorts of people of different nationalities and ethnicities. So I was hemming and hawing between attending a Christmas Eve service in my own (Protestant) tradition, which might be a little predictable, but would likely be very comforting, or attending a multi-ethnic, possibly raucous, Catholic service in a gorgeous cathedral, which would be more intesresting, but potentially less comforting in the spiritual sense.

I was feeling pretty excited and adventurous, so we headed for the Catholic service.

Arriving at St. Anthony’s it was obvious there were no more seats available. Like the choir concert I had attended the week before at the Catholic cathedral in Izmir, it was standing room only, and plenty of people were standing. In Canada, the fire marshal would have been on the scene. In Turkey, apparently it’s okay to stuff 2000 people in a church that seats 1000.

So we crammed ourselves into the crowd and chose a spot to stand which was closish to the front, but didn’t afford any view at all of the proceedings. For me, crazy crowded venues can be frustrating and exciting. In this case, the frustration was winning the battle against excitement. I loved the diversity and enthusiasm of the crowd, but not the size of it.

For those who wonder why so many folks would attend a Christmas Eve service in a country that is 95% Muslim, my theory is this: for many Muslims, special church services are more like concerts or cultural events. There were many Muslims at the Christmas Eve service at St. Anthony’s, and at a choir concert in the Catholic cathedral in Izmir earlier in December, practically everyone there was Muslim. Of course there are also many Muslims who would not want to enter a church or attend an event at a church, but not all.

We waited for about 15 minutes for the service to start. It was very unpleasant to be so squashed and not be able to see anything. Then, finally, the service started. The first thing to happen was a solo of “O Holy Night”. The singer began. We were very close to a speaker. Her voice was very loud. It was also out of tune. Before the song was over, I decided we would leave.

Once outside, I joked with Toby that now I had a theory about why there were so many riot police on Istiklal Caddesi that night: to prevent a riot caused by people listening to that terrible rendition of “O Holy Night”. (The real reason, of course, was that Istanbullus were protesting about the corruption allegations in the national government.) I also said that I guessed that the Catholics had used up all their beauty in creating their cathedrals and had none left for the music. We Protestants may not have the poshest digs, but we know from music!

So we left, and I took the family to the Union Church at the Dutch Consulate. We got there thirty minutes in advance of the beginning of their candlelight service and there were plenty of seats. Already, this was an improvement. But I was concerned about the patience levels of all the family members. No one but me was super keen on the whole church idea in the first place, and after the first experience, I was surprised that no one was complaining yet.

We waited half an hour and then the service got started. The first thing on the agenda was a solo of “O Holy Night”. It was done without a mic in the small church and it was perfect. The four heads of the monster all looked knowingly at each other. We were in the right place.

Listening to that beautiful voice, it was the first time in a long time that I felt like I would be happy going back to the West. I had started to wonder if the West had a soul at all, and whether I would experience some reverse culture shock upon returning. The service at the Dutch Consulate made me feel like this wasn’t the case.

The minister was South African and the very nice, very simple, even-palatable-for-the-atheist-in-our-group sermon was translated into Turkish since the congregation of that church is both Turkish and international.

The kids loved the candles at the end and the music and the little bags of candy they gave as parting gifts.

So our Christmas Eve church experience started out kinda rough, but ended up peaceful and lovely.

Afterward we walked back to our rented apartment in the Cukurcuma neighbourhood.

Shortly after we arrived home, Sebastian noticed something: there were two stockings hanging from the handles of the windows in the living room. One was grey with a snowman on it. The other was red with a Santa on it. He had never seen them before. He asked if anyone in the family had put them there. He started to get a crazy look in his eyes. He was REALLY excited to finally get the answer to a long-pondered question: does Santa come to Turkey?

He had been asking this question for months and I always said that I didn’t know. When I asked him if he was hoping to get some good presents from Santa, he said “No, I just really want to see him.” Back home in Canada, Santa always comes early on Christmas Eve and delivers his gifts in person, so Sebastian always gets to sit on his lap and spend a few minutes with him. This was what he was hoping for this year. Here’s a photo of the blessed event from last year:

But even though we were out at church when Santa actually came to the apartment, Sebastiaan was happy and delighted with the gifts that Santa had left for him: two chocolates and a small LEGO kit.

We passed Christmas morning in a way very similar to how we would have done it at home. I made Nigella’s Christmas morning muffins (luckily, Santa brought Sophia 12 silicon muffin molds! Perfect for traveling. That clever fellow.) and we ate them and drank coffee and opened presents.

We do not do huge piles of gifts for our kids usually, and we rarely ever buy anything for each other or other adults. So actually the teeny little pile under our cardboard Christmas tree was not so different from other Christmases. I think the kids were very happy with what they got. Tobias surprised me with a lightweight replacement tripod to use for the rest of our trip. My super skookum heavy duty tripod that he bought me for my birthday last year was tragically lost a couple weeks after we arrived in Izmir, and it was so nice to have a new one to use.

Our Christmas morning breakfast was unremarkable by North American standards, but in featuring bacon, it was outstanding by Turkish standards. The Carrefour in our neighbourhood had a small selection of pork products. The bacon was expensive, but it was Christmas after all.

After breakfast, Sophia and I had to run an errand. We had to go back to Sultanahmet and pick up our paintings from the previous day. It felt so weird to be running on errand on Christmas Day! But we all got dressed and went to go catch the tram. December 25th in Istanbul is just a regular day, so that’s what it felt like being out and about in town. I kind of liked it. It felt like our family had a little secret, just between the four of us. Like we were on holiday but everyone else had to work.

After picking up our pieces, we all decided to walk in Gulhane Park and have a simit and go to the outrageously priced cay bahcesi (tea garden) at  Seraglio point, which has some of the best views in Istanbul. Here’s some photos of our Christmas afternoon outing.

 

The Aya Sofya mosque. A beautiful, awe-inspiring sight, every time.

 

Sebastian wearing his new Christmas outfit, carrying his dinosaur Georgie and eating a simit at Gulhane Park.

At Seraglio Point, inspecting the marbled paintings.

Here I am “being Mother” at Seraglio Point. “Being Mother” is a phrase I learned from the Brits at St. John’s Anglican church in Izmir. It has the same meaning as the English phrase “pouring out”, or to be the one who pours out the tea for everyone else. I say it all the time now when we’re having tea. “Shall I be Mother?” It’s funny because I AM Mother.

The Bosphorus views really get me! What is it about this city that I find so alluring and inspiring? I don’t know. I just love it.

After that, there was just enough time for me to have a short, but meaningful, solo visit to The Museum of Innocence. I got a kick out of going to a museum on Christmas Day. I loved being there on my own, but I wish I could have stayed longer.

Soon it was time to walk up to Taksim Square to catch the metro to the Bosphorus Brewing Company, a brewpub where we had Christmas dinner reservations.

Here are the kids in Taksim Square, on the way to Christmas dinner. The lights were already up for the new year’s celebrations, so the city felt pretty festive, despite December 25 not being a special day for most Istanbullus.

I had to include this out of focus photo that Sebastian took because it commemorates the first time Sophia ever got served alcohol in a restaurrant! A glass of bubbly at the age of 14.5.

These guys were having a lighthearted time passing out fliers about upcoming protests about the corruption scandal. There were riot police nearby, but the atmosphere was still pretty relaxed. Two days later, the protests started up again, along with the customary clashes with police.

The dinner was nice. Several courses including candied walnuts, chestnut soup, goat cheese souffle, turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, and spotted dick for dessert. It was the first time in my life I’ve had Christmas dinner away from home. Of course restaurant cooking is never as good as home cooking, but how relaxing and civilized to just enjoy the day and then have someone else do the cooking and the dishes! I did expect a more ex-patty vibe at the restaurant that night, though. I thought a lot of the Christian Europeans living in Istanbul would want to take advantage of the Christmas menu and decorations, but most of the clientele were Turkish people not celebrating Christmas, but just having an evening out. It was a good vibe, just not a Christmassy one. Admittedly, a brewpub doesn’t scream “tradition!” Perhaps the ex-pats were gathering at places like the Four Seasons, which also does a nice Christmas dinner.

Spending Christmas in Istanbul was not something we did because to be adventurous or different. A lot of what drove the decision was financial. But it ended up being maybe my most memorable Christmas ever. I didn’t find it sad or isolating to be in a place where very few people were celebrating the holiday. It was neat to find little pockets, like the Union Church, where people were celebrating. And it was nice to be wished “Merry Christmas!” by a few people, like our marbling teacher, who knew it was a special day for us. And I just love Istanbul on any day of the year, and I’m always happy to be there, so being in your happy place on Christmas Day is not such a bad idea, is it?

As I was eating my main course I thought “Maybe I’ll come to Istanbul for Christmas on purpose some day.”