Holidays Around the World [sic]

Between Dear Husband having extra rehearsals and performances, and me having end-of-the-year deadlines, we could easily find ourselves on December 24 without a tree, decorations, Christmas letter/cards, or gifts. I gave myself a few days of vacation in early December so that we could "do Christmas" together. 

We kicked off with a work holiday party (for me) on Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon, we met up with some church friends at the University of Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning for the first Nationality Rooms Open House since the pandemic began. 

The Nationality Rooms were originally going to be decorated for countries on the first floor, Pennsylvanian "pioneers" on the second floor, and various aspects of Pittsburgh on the third floor. Due in part to the Great Depression, 19 rooms on the first floor were completed from 1938-1957. A further 12 have been dedicated on the third floor since 1987. All but 2 are also used as  classrooms--the Early American and Syrian-Lebanese rooms are protected by glass and opened only with a guide. Local heritage groups raise the money and create the design, and then the University promises to pay for upkeep in perpetuity.

When vising the Nationality Rooms, you have to make sure to look up! This is the painted recessed ceiling in the Greek room. 

The ceiling of the Chinese room was gorgeous. I learned that (usually) only the Emperor can have a 5-fingered dragon like this specimen; everyone else has to make do with 4 fingers. Other thoughtful details include a Fu dog for luck and the names of famous scholars painted high on the walls in gold, with a space left blank as if to say, [YOUR NAME HERE].

In the Romanian room, this glass mosaic, created for the 1939 New York World's Fair, depicts the Prince of Wallachia refusing to renounce Christianity; he and his sons were executed by the Ottoman Empire in 1714. Below is the colorful crown molding of the Polish room.

Naturally, the Weihnachtsbaum in the German room was well decked with apples, pinecones, and candles. The stained glass windows with Grimms fairy-tale designs are very pretty, and there are four inlaid wooden mosaics with characters from epics; this one shows Siegfried slaying the dragon.

The Czechoslovak room is made of wood and painted to look like a Slovak farmhouse. That's first Czech President Tomáš Masaryk looming over the little paper figures in the creche scene.

Grandfather sheaves of grain on the left, and copper- and wood-working on the right, from the Ukrainian room. There was a YouTube video playing of a woman singing a harvest song on a well-dressed sound stage.

One of the newer rooms (dedicated 2012), the Turkish room was one of my favorites (and I think was the most expensive to date). In addition to  beautiful woodwork on the ceiling, walls, and pull-down desks, I love the seaside mural behind the false windows in the background of the photo above. Below, there was magnificently painted tile artwork.

This is part of the mosaic on the floor of the Israeli heritage room on the third floor, which also contains a reproduction of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that says, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks...."

Why the "[sic]" in the blog title? Reflecting the make-up of the University of Pittsburgh community in the 1920s and '30s, Europe is over represented, while South America is not found at all, and the entire African continent has to make do with a single room, dedicated in 1989. To the right is the carved entrance door in a Yoruba style; it depicts the ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Benin, Kongo/Angola, Kuba, Mali, and Zimbabwe.

The rooms are supposed to reflect national culture pre-1787 (when the university was founded and the U.S. Constitution written), but most of these countries didn't exist as such then (Italy [1861], Germany [1871], Romania [1877],Czechoslovakia [1918], etc.). Even Armenia gets a room! And it didn't attain autonomy from the Soviet Union until 1991!

The German room, for one, celebrates its creative geniuses from at least 2 centuries, with the names of Lessing, Goethe, Beethoven, and Brahms carved into the dark wood running around the room, which is otherwise supposed to look like a Renaissance German university like the one at Heidelberg.

The light in India's room was beautiful, which just made the stonework and brick stand out even more. (The architectural firm won an award for this design, which approximates a courtyard in the famous Nalanda University of the 4th-9th centuries.) All the rooms are decorated for Christmas if that is the winter holiday the majority of the population celebrates, but the Chinese room was decked out for Chinese New Year (coming up on the year of the rabbit), and this one for Diwali, the festival of lights.

The last room we visited was the Japanese room, where children were learning to fold origami. I wished that the elderly gentleman who was directing traffic here had offered a little spiel of facts as in some of the other rooms, but maybe it was just as well, as despite choosing only half the rooms, A. and J. were ready for a late lunch, and DH and I were tired of the crush of people. I tried and failed to buy an afternoon snack from the table set up downstairs, so we went home for a quiet evening in front of the fireplace, where I could read more about the rooms on Wikipedia.

Monday we will get and decorate a Christmas tree. DH has big plans for lights on the outside of the house, and since many of our strands and nets are 10-15 years old, we will have to make a hardware store run to get new supplies--I'm also thinking of splurging on some light-up (rein)deer for the front yard. On Wednesday we have reservations for Christmas brunch at the Inn on Negley, since we had such a good time last year.

P.s. Visiting the Nationality Rooms reminded me of my friend and mentor, John Erlen, who very kindly took me and my family to visit the Czechoslovakian and Austrian rooms when they were in town for Thanksgiving our first year in Pittsburgh, back in 2016. <3