Nationality rooms get some holiday cheer

For a building that already looks a bit too elaborate compared to the rest of the… For a building that already looks a bit too elaborate compared to the rest of the architecture on Pitt’s campus, additional decorations to the Cathedral of Learning may seem unnecessary.

But every year in mid-November, groups from the Pittsburgh area materialize to turn the austere stone walls of the Cathedral into a holiday spectacular by decorating the 26 Nationality Rooms for the holiday season.

There are individual committees that decorate each of the rooms to represent the given culture’s holiday traditions.

This year, the rooms will be decorated until Jan. 13, 2007. The annual Holiday Open House will be held on Dec. 3. During Open House, which will run from noon to 4 p.m., committee members will explain the significance of the different aspects of the rooms, performances will be held every 15 minutes and different foods from around the world will be served.

Admission to the Open House is free.

According to the Director of Nationality Rooms Programs, E. Maxine Bruhns, between 2,000 and 3,000 people attend the Open House every year.

“We’ve been participating in the Open House for many, many years,” Karen Yee, a member of the committee that decorates the Chinese room, said.

She said that the decorations in the Chinese room reflect the Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year is the biggest celebration on the Chinese calendar, she said.

“It combines eight American holidays into one.”

The end of the Year of the Dog and the beginning of the Year of the Boar will be Feb. 17, 2007.

One of the decorations in the Chinese room is the traditional Chinese New Year arrangement, which includes three key elements:

“Bamboo represents the spirit because it bends but does not break, pine represents longevity because it’s evergreen and plum blossom represents strength because it blooms in the winter,” Yee said.

Bruhns said that although the committees “more or less do the same decorations every year, they try to do it as authentically as possible.”

Christel Van Maurik, chairwoman of the German Nationality Room, echoed this sentiment.

“Well, we try to do the original decorations that people used a long, long time ago, which are actually apples, nuts and cookies,” Van Maurik said.

“We try to get German cookies and hang them up. Of course some of those disappear — because they are real cookies,” she added.

Van Maurik explained that the decorations in the German room represent very old traditions.

“It was before the Middle Ages that people believed in bringing a tree to preserve the eternal spring. And then the legend goes that Martin Luther really liked that, and he’s the one that came up with hanging something on the tree,” she said.

The ornaments on the trees were, according to tradition, “mostly crosses and things that represented the sun and the stars and natural things,” Van Maurik said.

Although they can’t carry on this tradition in the Cathedral because of the obvious fire hazard, placing lit candles on a tree is a German tradition, although they would keep buckets of water behind the tree “just in case,” Van Maurik said.

Maria Bistey, auditor of the Hungarian committee, said they will be bringing additional decorations, including favors on the tree, to the Open House that they didn’t want to leave in the rooms when classes were taking place.

In Hungarian tradition, children received bananas, oranges or nuts on Dec. 6, Saint Nicholas’ Day.

“And if you were bad, you got a switch,” Bistey said with a laugh.

According to Bruhns, there are eight rooms currently in the works to be added to the existing 26. She said the Welsh and Turkish rooms will be completed by next year, and each room will cost more than $300,000 to complete.