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Merry moments
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Wreaths, cakes, carols and Santa Claus... Christmas is not just about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. It is much more, says ELIZABETH ROY.
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Every year, Christmas comes to Chennai. You know about it when shops and some private buildings are lit up. Shop windows, lobbies and atriums carry Christmas-type decorations — holly and wreaths and Christmas trees generously decorated over with cotton.
Whatever happened to the time when Christmas decoration was something special? Spencer's had its own brand, which was uniquely beautiful every year and it was very different from what the VTI would come up with or, for that matter, the Connemara Hotel. Window-shopping was a necessary and pleasurable part of Christmas. Some of the hotels continue to be very exquisitely done up in the spirit of the season.
In some of the bigger shops, silly looking people dressed in ill-fitting Santa Claus costumes lunge at unsuspecting children with bells and lollipops! Neither party seems to remember Saint Nicholas, a minor saint from the 4th Century who had a reputation for generosity and kindness and performed miracles for the poor and unhappy.
The popular view of Santa that we have today came in 1822 with newspapers and magazines publishing Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". A hundred years later, Coca-Cola further influenced and reinforced the Santa image by running a series of Haddon Sundblom paintings in its ads. And Santa, like any self-respecting product, has to have his own jingle.
In Chennai, wherever there is even the slightest option of music, even in reversing vehicles, they run through the same 15-year old tape of ``Jingle Bells". In fact, the entire repertoire of carols adds up to a short list of 20 odd songs and statistics have it that any enthusiastic shopper should hear snatches of each song at least a hundred times over the few weeks leading up to Christmas.
Talking about carols, Chennai, still strong in its tradition of Western classical music, has many fine choric groups, which come together during the Christmas season in organised carol services.
The Madras Christian College School, Carols by Candlelight at St George's Cathedral and St. Christopher's College, to name a few, bring together almost all the choirs in town.
Come December and the cake shops get into their act and go for it with a vengeance. Some even hold exhibitions! Many homes become cake factories. Work on the cakes begins a year ahead, with dried fruits being soaked in alcoholic liquors to raise the spirits and keep down the mould. These cakes are baked for two or three hours at low temperatures. The result is a taste of heaven, which melts in the mouth.
Then, there is shopping for new clothes and gifts for each other, primarily amongst Christians who, since they make up just a couple of per cent of the population, could not possibly make any significant difference to retail sales.
Where the trade has succeeded in making Christmas into a major secular event is in the business of sending each other cards with the season's greetings. E-mail has begun coming in as an alternative, though in a less beautiful and less personal way.
The one tradition that has not changed is that of Christmas as a family occasion. There is a special gathering of the family. You return to the hearth from wherever you live or work to strengthen the family bonds, share joy and, of course, eat till you can eat no more. You also visit friends and relations and the old and the sick in the community to throw your arms around each other and say ``Merry Christmas'', two words that hold the real meaning of the event, a holiday that has the power to change the equations of love and hate on the face of the earth.
Everyone, and even Christians themselves, needs to consider relocating Christmas in their lives. It is not just the celebration of an event that took place 2,000 years ago. In fact, there are no records dating the birth of Jesus Christ to the 25th of December.
The first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, chose the date in 336 AD.
He may have intended to replace the pagan festival of Saturnalia with a Christian alternative.
Today, Christmas has become more of a celebration per se and has overtaken both Advent and Epiphany.
Amidst all the fun and merry-making, not many people remember that Christmas is the culmination of a month-long festival of Advent.
Advent goes beyond being merely backward looking, being merely the celebration of an event, which has already happened in all its fullness to a forward looking celebration, in the present, which anticipates and looks forward to the coming of peace and forgiveness, Jesus Christ being seen as a symbol of ``peace on earth and goodwill to all men".
The festive season leads from Advent into Christmas and beyond to Epiphany on January 6. Epiphany, which in many parts of the world is the event of the season far more so than Christmas, remembers the public act of Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordan.
It is a symbol of sanctification, of manifestation — a very old idea of divinity showing itself to mankind in the hope changing its very direction. A symbol of radical renewal, that the old is over and the new has come.
When we look around at our troubled times, we realise that we, now perhaps more than ever before, need peace, forgiveness and renewal.
And Christmas offers all of us a joyous occasion to reflect, to share and to hold together in anticipation of better times.
A truce was called between World War I soldiers on the frontline on December 24, 1914. It lasted long enough for both sides to exchange gifts, sing carols and share a game of football!
A soldier wrote home, ``Just think about it, while you were enjoying your Christmas dinner, I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before! It was astounding!''
If only the moments of peace could be prolonged. If only people could be encouraged to understand what each other's religions really mean at a human level, there is out there a very good chance that we will get to know each other a little more, demonise each other a little less and perhaps even together begin to anticipate a whiff of peace at the end of the very long, dark tunnel.
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