Christmas in Sarajevo

Midnight mass at the Old Cathedral.

Merry Christmas, all. Sarajevo is 80% Muslim, but nevertheless once can still find an obnoxious number of Christmas lights in some places, partly due to the Christian population, partly due to Christmas as a celebration of unbridled capitalism.

I spent Christmas Eve at an American friend's house for dinner, and then briefly on to midnight mass at the Old Cathedral. We couldn't really bear it for too long, especially after I realized that the dirty looks I was getting were because I was leaning on the bowl of Holy Water. Anyway, outside the Cathedral was more of a rowdy Saturday night party, with hot wine being served and firecrackers being set off. Christmas is just another excuse to drink here, really.

Firecrackers? Yup, you can buy them on any street corner for a couple bucks and set them off anywhere you please. "Safety first" is an utterly foreign concept in Bosnia. It's more like "Safety fourth or fifth" after "fun," "speed," "cigarettes" and "being really macho."

Well, in order to experience a true Bosnian Christmas, my friend Knute and I bought some fireworks for 2 Euros and set them off right in front of a policeman in the very middle of downtown. The first couple flares were duds and one nearly landed on a man's head. No one, neither the man nor the cop, seemed phased. And that's how I almost set someone's hair on fire for Christmas.