For those of you not living in Switzerland or in a country that borders on it, try to name one item of news that happened there in the past 50 years. Try it. I am certain that for most of you nothing will immediately come to mind. This is a testament to Switzerland’s inherent stability and, in the eyes of some, its dullness.
You don’t go to Switzerland to make something of yourself (except maybe a skier), to become a billionaire, or to party. You go to Switzerland for economic reasons: either you’re a migrant looking for a better life, or you’re a very, very wealthy person who wants to enjoy some peace and quiet while taking advantage of the best administered state in the world (at least from those that I have personally spent time in) with a rock solid banking system to protect your assets. There are exceptions, of course; diplomats in Geneva, boarding school boys and girls, and so on. Switzerland is not an exciting country, which is why so many like it.
I hadn’t been to Zürich in at least seven years. Switzerland’s most populous city, it does at least give off some vibes of ‘happening’, but it never does. Affluence is on full display here, but never, ever in an ostentatious manner. This makes sense, as Zürich is in a Protestant canton, and Calvinism still forms the substructure of Swiss culture in these parts.
This Calvinism also explains why so much of the downtown core is decorated in Christmas colours, but Christ is nowhere on display. 1 Christmas is a big economic draw, but Calvinists banned any holy day not mentioned in the Scripture:
Before the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, Roman Catholicism celebrated the “Christ Mass.” Indeed, it was one of many special masses and feasts of the Catholic Church that celebrated key events in Jesus’ life or the birthdays of saints. The three main Protestant movements that ultimately came to America had three different reactions to this situation.
First, although the Anglican Church developed a Protestant theology, it kept much of Catholic liturgy, including festivals that celebrated aspects of Christ’s life and the feast days of many saints. It gave special emphasis to the celebration of Christmas.
Second, after Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, special liturgical observances began to be frowned upon. The Lutherans thought that the celebrations of saints’ days were too much and cancelled them. But, they still emphasized observing events in Jesus’ life, and so continued with joyous Christmas festivities.
Third, the Calvinists in Switzerland banned all Christian holy days not mentioned in Scripture. That approach meant that the Sabbath was acceptable, but nothing else. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and other celebrations were to be treated as normal days with nothing special about them.
Don’t take their word for it. Here’s what John Calvin actually said in response to being “forced” to celebrate Christmas:
Now, I see here today more people that I am accustomed to having at the sermon. Why is that? It is Christmas day. And who told you this? You poor beasts. That is a fitting euphemism for all of you who have come here today to honor Noel. Did you think you would be honoring God? Consider what sort of obedience to God your coming displays. In your mind, you are celebrating a holiday for God, or turning today into one but so much for that. In truth, as you have often been admonished, it is good to set aside one day out of the year in which we are reminded of all the good that has occurred because of Christ’s birth in the world, and in which we hear the story of his birth retold, which will be done Sunday. But if you think that Jesus Christ was born today, you are as crazed as wild beasts. For when you elevate one day alone for the purpose of worshiping God, you have just turned it into an idol. True, you insist that you have done so for the honor of God, but it is more for the honor of the devil.
Let us consider what our Lord has to say on the matter. Was it not Saul’s intention to worship God when he spared Agag, the king of the Amalekites, along with the best spoils and cattle? He says as much: ‘I want to worship God.’ Saul’s tongue was full of devotion and good intention. but what was the response he received? ‘You soothsayer! You heretic! You apostate! You claim to be honoring God, but God rejects you and disavows all that you have done.’ Consequently, the same is true of our actions. For no day is superior to another. It matters not whether we recall our Lord’s nativity on a Wednesday, Thursday, or some other day. But when we insist on establishing a service of worship based on our whim, we blaspheme God, and create an idol, though we have done it all in the name of God. And when you worship God in the idleness of a holiday spirit, that is a heavy sin to bear, and one which attracts others about it, until we reach the height of iniquity. Therefore, let us pay attention to what Micah is saying here, that God must not only strip away things that are bad in themselves, but must also eliminate anything that might foster superstition. Once we have understood that, we will no longer find it strange that Noel is not being observed today, but that on Sunday we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper and recite the story of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. But all those who barely know Jesus Christ, or that we must be subject to him, and that God removes all those impediments that prevent us from coming to him, these folk, I say, will at best grit their teeth. They came here in anticipation of celebrating a wrong intention, but will leave with it wholly unfulfilled.
—From Calvin’s sermon preached on Christmas day 1551 in John Calvin, Sermons on the Book of Micah, trans. Benjamin Wirt Farley (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2003), 302–04 (HT: Ryan Cavanaugh)
The result is this:
Like the rest of Europe in one way or another, Switzerland has undergone a dramatic shift demographically: 26% of the population was foreign born as of a decade ago. Walk along any street in Zürich and you will hear Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Albanian, Romanian, Serbian, Croatian, Tamil, Turkish, etc. Like much of the rest of the West, it is globalizing and diversifying. What separates the Swiss from much of the rest of the West is that they are much more strict regarding granting citizenship to newcomers, making them jump through many more hoops than usual, if they are permitted to begin the process in the first place.
Zürich appears solidly upper middle class when one looks at the faces of the people there. I recall seeing the open air heroin shooting galleries when I first visited in 1994, but I do not know if they still exist. I have never seen homelessness in the city, nor much in the way of ugliness. It is a tidy place located in a visually beautiful geographic setting (the Alps are in touching distance to the immediate south). The key word here is sicher (secure). Used in so many different contexts (e.g. for sure, certainly, etc.), it betrays the Swiss culture every single time it is uttered, and it is uttered a lot!
Encounters
Wandering around the northern edge of the Zürichsee, it was time for a drink. I headed into a pub that looked inviting and made my way to the bar to order a bourbon, something that would warm me up after walking around for the past two hours. Cedric, the bartender, poured me a shot and the woman right next to me at the bar said “a man who knows what he wants!”. We will call this woman Taylor for the purpose of this diary entry.
Taylor was obviously in the mood for conversation, so I happily obliged. Within the first five minutes I learned from her that she was an American from Raleigh, North Carolina, and has been working in Switzerland for the past three years. 5’11” tall (I guessed it correctly), she was currently living in Biel (a French-German bilingual canton near the French border) but preferred to spend her free time in Zürich as it was bigger and provided more opportunities. She informed me that her dating apps are set to Zürich “because it’s more international”.
Taylor was still happy that she had relocated to Switzerland even though she didn’t like her work and said that she was awful at it. Like many (including those of you reading this), she feels that the USA is one, large insane asylum, one that she happily escaped from. I did not detect much in the way of politics from her, other than her describing to me that her father went from being a centrist to a Trumpist overnight in 2016, and that he, like those on the other side of the aisle, were too happy in politicizing every single thing in their lives.
Taylor found it difficult to make local Swiss friends as she found them insular (which they are). She lived for a time in Solothurn, a beautiful Baroque town where I lived for almost a year over 15 years ago. She got to know the old town really, really well as she was stuck there during COVID and had nowhere else to go. For her, Zürich represents more choice on the menu, particularly dating options, which she spoke about at length. I detected a loneliness about her, one that she immediately betrayed by asking Cedric the Bartender to find her a seat at a table where she could meet new people, as punters were rolling in to watch the France vs. Morocco match. Thankfully, I wasn’t her type and she wasn’t mine. We parted ways amicably.
“English speaker! YAY!”, exclaimed a British woman who slid along the bar to take Taylor’s spot next to mine. Isabel is a Bongland 10 from Brighton who was on her way to Istanbul, Turkey to get a BBL procedure. What is a BBL, you ask? BBL stands for ‘Brazilian Butt Lift’. In this procedure, fat is taken from the waist (and elsewhere) and transferred to the butt to make it larger and more shapely. Isabel explained to me that the procedure was necessary because she was segueing out of “cam work” and into stripping. You just never know who you will meet when you wander around aimlessly.
I headed down to the Christkindlimarkt to survey the scene before me. In typical Swiss fashion it was neither boisterous nor subdued. The average age of those attending was around 35, all professionals. Swiss women are not naturally elegant and veer towards a “peasant girl makes good in the big town” appearance, but they can be pretty in their own way. Once again, no Jesus Christ, no Virgin Mary, no manger, nothing outwardly Christian at this Christkindlimarkt. I don’t think that I heard any proper Christmas music either. All very nice and polite….all very, very Swiss even if up to a third of the people attending had no Swiss blood in them. The attendees were very European though. No sign of Africans, nor Tamils, nor any other visible minorities. This was a European party.
I searched around for some bourbon but found none. I’d have to make due with Jack Daniels (a woman from Kentucky years and years ago taught me that bourbon can only come from her state and not from her neighbours to the south). It was at this one stand where I met Herman from Cape Town, South Africa and Massimo from Genoa, Italy. Both were working a stand that provided food and drink. Herman had only arrived in Zürich for the first time three weeks ago and fell immediately in love with the place. Massimo was back for the first time since COVID-19 began, having worked the same stand for the four Christmases prior to it.
“This country actually works like a country is supposed to!”, explained Herman, testing me out to see if I was hip to the situation in South Africa. “My girlfriend is here so I can’t look at other women”, said Massimo, being the typical Italian male. His short but cute girlfriend (and owner of the stand) joined me at the bar. A Sicilian from Catania, I leapt at the opportunity to tell her that I had visited her city and her island last year for the first time. Bringing up Taormina, Messina, Cefalu, Piana degli Albanesi, and how Antonioni used Mt. Etna in the closing shot of L’Avventura, she was delighted by the fact that I didn’t mention the Mafia even once.
I’ll be back in Zürich in a little over three weeks and will report back then.
User Sebastian A has corrected me, informing me that Calvinism was largely confined to Geneva and that Zurich was more Lutheran in orientation.
Hit the like button above and use the share button to share this across social media. Please consider subscribing if you haven't done so already.
Good to see Bongers living up to their reputations