MERRY XMAS

 Merry Xmas folks! It’s Christmas time, a week of festivities world over, irrespective of the region, race, warfare or strife. During First World War, one Christmas in 1914 widely known as Christmas Truce, (unofficial of course) as the Armies were still at war, the British, the Germans and the French Armies stepped out of their bunkers  exchanged greetings, sang carols, celebrated Christmas and then returned to the business of war. How I wish, the Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians would all bury the hatchet, take a breather and give peace a chance.

Our exposure to Christmas commences when we learn “X” stands for Xmas and not Twitter like these days. We studied in a Hindi medium Missionary school in the Primary as my father was posted in a tribal area and that was one of the two schools, the other one was a little far and there were no school buses there. We were exposed to the carols in Hindi for the first time, I can still recall, “Bethlehem ki gaushale main Jeevan ka ujiyala hai..”( Christ was born in the cowshed in Bethlehem..). We would of course hum the hymns at home which were met with amused looks. We looked forward to Christmas, as it was the harbinger of the winter break and school teachers were generally quite benevolent and generous. Our Santa was the bell man Benjamin who would dress up in the Santa attire and distribute greeting cards to the kids. The cards though were the ones which were received from the Western countries, “used ones” addressed to their near and dear ones in previous years which were discarded. But a greeting card was a greeting card and the wishes were genuine.

As I grew older and moved on in life, did not get to study in any other missionary institution so the celebrations were more traditionally Indian with Jalebis. Incidentally my grandfather was born on Christmas Day and we celebrated the occasion with my mother’s hot piping Jalebis every year. Later years, we would scout for them everywhere, be it Leh Ladakh or Wellington and the tradition carries on having just binged on them during breakfast. 

It leaves me pondering as to why we Indians are so keen to enjoy all the festivals, irrespective of religion, caste or creed. After all Christmas was the festival of our oppressors, the Britishers, something which should logically have been an anathema. Is it because we were so enslaved psychologically that we could not get out of their shadow, or is it because our constitution mandates we are a secular country and hence we must celebrate a Christian festival also in the same spirit. How is that our parents did not object to our humming of the hymns, when we are Hindu Brahmins? So much so that when I was in the UN on deputation as a peacekeeper, my colleague a Jordanian was flabbergasted when he discovered that I had no qualms in saying, “Ya ilaha illallah, Muhammadur Rasulullah”, which literally means “I bear witness that there no deity but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”.  But when I asked him to recite a shloka after me, he refused. It comes to us naturally to respect each religion and not just tolerate it, after all we firmly believe in “Ekam Sad Vipra Bahudha Vadanti”, the ancient Vedic wisdom of the reality of one supreme deity and myriad different ways of worshipping Him. In the Armed Forces we are the true torch bearers of these ethos, our war cries echo our call to our traditional deities but our temples are universally “Sarv Dharm Sthal”, where Ram, Christ, Mohammed and Guru Nanak are happily sharing the space and the evening Aarti includes all of them without exception. Merry Xmas again!