Easterine Kire
In many metropolitan cities in India, as well as around the world, gift shops have Christmas goodies on display by the beginning of November. Airport shops brilliantly display their Christmas offers. Santas are available in all shapes and sizes, and the interiors of shops are covered in Christmas paraphernalia such as tinsel, cards, reindeer, stars of Bethlehem and rolls of green and red wrapping paper. Battery-operated Santas climb up and down ladders or do some other Santa-like activity all day. At all these shops, shoppers continued to arrive in a long and steady stream. Christmas carols played on the shop’s music system draws customers like bees to a jar of nectar. They come and come.
It is the same scene whether you picture it in Bangkok, or London, or Delhi, Dimapur or Kohima. The commercialization of Christmas is complete and undiluted. Sunday services at this time find preachers railing against this heathen practice, and the merrymaking using the birthday of Christ as an excuse. But can we think this one out properly? Should we complain that everyone is making Christmas a celebration? True, it appears as though they missed out on the significance of the birth of Christ, but on the other hand, the Christian minority of India could rethink the commercial approach and be grateful instead that non-believers are also joining in celebrating the most important element of their faith. Saint Paul would have said, “Don’t stop them; whichever way they approach it and even exploit it, Christ’s birth is still being acknowledged and celebrated.” Much rather that than a governmental order banning the celebration and declaring the 25th of December into something else totally unrelated.
Because Christmas is being made so visible in shops, the question, “What is Christmas?” will be generated more than once by young children, and it will be followed by other questions like, “Who is the Christ-child? Why celebrate his birth?” Good, healthy questions that can hopefully lead to the right answers. The lighted churches, the coloured lights on rooftops and the red bamboo stars are our way of welcoming the season. These are visually so attractive as well and set the atmosphere for Christmas for both believers and non-believers. As well, this is the only time that used clothes are sold so cheap and in such abundance to the local populace. It is all good. Celebration is good, trade is good, even crass commercialization is tolerable: they create different levels of joy and anything that has joy as a side effect is good.
Where evangelization has failed, perhaps celebration and giving will do the job. And we can all be part of that in ingenious ways. What better way to share the message of love than by using the opportunity to gift love to neighbours, colleagues at work and to the vegetable sellers and the daily wage earner?
This Christmas, a young mother in Delhi is making eggless cakes for her non-Christian, vegetarian friends. The cakes say, “For God so loved the world” so much more effectively than using mere words.
Those of us back at home, bewailing our inability to draw out our savings to help us celebrate Christmas, why not do something different? We all have used clothes and blankets in our homes. We may not think these are worth anything. But as the cold approaches, there are many people in need of an extra blanket for their families. The BRO workers are one section of our neglected population who could do with such a Christmas gift. Their children could do with warm socks and leggings, while the women would welcome a good woolly sweater. Likewise for the men. Surely someone has a cake or two to spare. These workers even work on Christmas eve, while sounds of celebration are echoing from hill to hill. Forget about the sermons against all the wrong ways in which Christmas is being observed. Just catch the spirit, put others first, warm a heart and a hearth, you won’t regret it.
