Beirut: Beirut in December What was once a shopping event, where a day-long traffic jam kept the streets lit with Christmas lights and building-shaped billboards advertising champagne and ornaments.
Barely two years into the brutal economic collapse, the lights have gone out on Beirut’s business day and a lack of electricity has left the city’s streets gloomy.
This year, roadside billboards tell a different, more frugal story: one that depicts the worst financial crisis ever in the once free-spending Middle Eastern country.
Steel safes, banknote counters, discounts on money transfers – the offers placed on bridges connecting the main highway in Beirut are not your typical Christmas delight.
“Sales of safes and safes have increased by 35 to 50 percent since the start of the economic crisis in 2019,” a sales representative for SmartSecurity LB, one of Lebanon’s main retailers, told AFP.
Alarm and CCTV systems are also selling like hot cakes.
A lack of confidence in banks, widely blamed for the worst financial crisis in Lebanese history, has pushed up an estimated $10 billion in cash flows into Lebanese households.
“We are at minus 90 percent compared to pre-2019 crisis levels,” said Antonio Vincenty, President of Picasso Out-of-Home Advertising Company, a market leader in Lebanon.
Banks, whose campaigns were once ubiquitous on their billboards, have gone bankrupt, sometimes replaced by money transfer companies that offer to funnel the expatriate’s precious dollars into the country.
,digital Screens stay off, mostly because of problems with the power supply,” said Vincenty.
The government provides barely two hours of electricity and the cost of powering the screens with the new non-subsidised diesel will exceed the income of the customers.
In Beirut’s long deserted downtown area, where luxury brands used to be concentrated, an apologetic Christmas sign still glows at night with the words: “Despite it all”.
On Hamra, a main street in central Beirut, little is left of the High Street for Christmas shopping and the mood echoes the popular hashtag “Santa Bala Shanta” (Santa without the sack).
Municipality budgets can’t keep the traffic lights on, let alone the miles of string lights that lined the road throughout December.
Even Wham’s usually inevitable seasonal hit “Last Christmas” is nowhere to be heard, perhaps a relief to some, but a sure sign that something has changed.
On shop windows, Christmas sale posters are outnumbered by “We’re Closed” signs—and beggars have replaced Santa impersonators on the street outside.
The busiest shops are the forex booths, which now offer free black plastic bags in which to draw out the constant depreciation of the Lebanese pound.
According to the United Nations income limit of $2 per day, four out of five Lebanese are now considered poor.
In a supermarket in an upscale neighborhood of the capital, half a bottle of the cheapest champagne costs 900,000 Lebanese pounds, well above the minimum monthly wage, which now costs less than $25 on the black market.
In years past, giant pyramids of panettones and Christmas hampers overflowed with foie gras and cognacs obstructed the aisles.
“There’s an offer on detergent this year! Buy one, get one free,” laughed Christine Credy as she pushed her empty trolley past the welcome displays and into the silent store.
“I think this is an opportunity to focus on the real meaning of Christmas, but I have to admit that I used to enjoy Christmas shopping,” said the 49-year-old.
“However now in Lebanon it is the same thing: whether it is Christmas or any other day, there is no happiness left.”
Barely two years into the brutal economic collapse, the lights have gone out on Beirut’s business day and a lack of electricity has left the city’s streets gloomy.
This year, roadside billboards tell a different, more frugal story: one that depicts the worst financial crisis ever in the once free-spending Middle Eastern country.
Steel safes, banknote counters, discounts on money transfers – the offers placed on bridges connecting the main highway in Beirut are not your typical Christmas delight.
“Sales of safes and safes have increased by 35 to 50 percent since the start of the economic crisis in 2019,” a sales representative for SmartSecurity LB, one of Lebanon’s main retailers, told AFP.
Alarm and CCTV systems are also selling like hot cakes.
A lack of confidence in banks, widely blamed for the worst financial crisis in Lebanese history, has pushed up an estimated $10 billion in cash flows into Lebanese households.
“We are at minus 90 percent compared to pre-2019 crisis levels,” said Antonio Vincenty, President of Picasso Out-of-Home Advertising Company, a market leader in Lebanon.
Banks, whose campaigns were once ubiquitous on their billboards, have gone bankrupt, sometimes replaced by money transfer companies that offer to funnel the expatriate’s precious dollars into the country.
,digital Screens stay off, mostly because of problems with the power supply,” said Vincenty.
The government provides barely two hours of electricity and the cost of powering the screens with the new non-subsidised diesel will exceed the income of the customers.
In Beirut’s long deserted downtown area, where luxury brands used to be concentrated, an apologetic Christmas sign still glows at night with the words: “Despite it all”.
On Hamra, a main street in central Beirut, little is left of the High Street for Christmas shopping and the mood echoes the popular hashtag “Santa Bala Shanta” (Santa without the sack).
Municipality budgets can’t keep the traffic lights on, let alone the miles of string lights that lined the road throughout December.
Even Wham’s usually inevitable seasonal hit “Last Christmas” is nowhere to be heard, perhaps a relief to some, but a sure sign that something has changed.
On shop windows, Christmas sale posters are outnumbered by “We’re Closed” signs—and beggars have replaced Santa impersonators on the street outside.
The busiest shops are the forex booths, which now offer free black plastic bags in which to draw out the constant depreciation of the Lebanese pound.
According to the United Nations income limit of $2 per day, four out of five Lebanese are now considered poor.
In a supermarket in an upscale neighborhood of the capital, half a bottle of the cheapest champagne costs 900,000 Lebanese pounds, well above the minimum monthly wage, which now costs less than $25 on the black market.
In years past, giant pyramids of panettones and Christmas hampers overflowed with foie gras and cognacs obstructed the aisles.
“There’s an offer on detergent this year! Buy one, get one free,” laughed Christine Credy as she pushed her empty trolley past the welcome displays and into the silent store.
“I think this is an opportunity to focus on the real meaning of Christmas, but I have to admit that I used to enjoy Christmas shopping,” said the 49-year-old.
“However now in Lebanon it is the same thing: whether it is Christmas or any other day, there is no happiness left.”
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