I had this published on ABCDlady a couple of years ago and thought I might as well repost it for the holidays.

A Multicultural Holiday

It was a lazy December, and we didn’t feel like pulling out the Christmas tree and spending all day decorating it. My mom insisted we have something though—it was tradition. So we decorated a potted plant from our suburban living room with a select handful of Christmas ornaments on it. We even completed it with a star at the top. But this was an atypical Christmas. Our usual Christmas features 20 devout Hindus following along with their printed music to “O Come All Ye Faithful,” my favorite carol. We never even had any discussion over whether we should crown our tree with an angel.

As Hindus, we celebrated Diwali too, having dinner with neighboring family at home or a restaurant. Days before, we shopped for new clothes, which we kept folded aside with all the tags still on them until the holiday morning. Diwali was always a small event—people had work and school to go to the next day anyway.

So, perhaps because of this, on Christmas we did it up. Weeks in advance each year, my brother and I unearthed three big cardboard boxes labeled “Christmas” and start sorting through them: icicle Christmas lights, artificial tree, and every Christmas ornament we bought since my family moved to Canada in 1979.

Then, on Christmas Eve, about 20 of us descended on the next person’s house in the holiday rotations, and the jolly good times began. Most notable was the food. We would have some sort of potluck dinner theme: Mexican, Italian, Thai, North Indian or South Indian. Whatever the ethnicity, the setup was the same, with pots and serving bowls lined up along the island in the middle of our kitchen. First, the kids stood in line with paper plates, piling on food while being told to take more vegetables and dal (lentils). Then, we took our dinners pretty much anywhere: tables, couches, the floor. After we were all taken care of, we ran to the basement to entertain ourselves while the adults took their turn. In case you didn’t catch that: Indian style dining, global food and a Christian holiday.

The night also included movie-style holiday festivities. Family crafts, such as decorating our own glass Christmas balls or a secret Santa gift exchange preceded carols. Then, whichever kid was old enough to read but young enough to wear a Santa hat without embarrassment handed out the gifts under the tree. The tree, as with every proper Christmas tree, included lights, tinsel, a star or an angel and pine cones with glitter and red yarn coming out of them—one of many handmade additions from my brother and me. But then, over the years, we also managed to include a Christmas ball with an “om” written on it in Hindi, and even one in Tamil.

Now, decades later, our generation is having our own children. A lot of things have changed, of course. No longer is the staple food rice—it’s pasta and tomato sauce or cheese pizza. Unlike our parents, many of us don’t have the option of sliding into Tamil whenever we need to have adult conversations. And this time, we find ourselves constantly deliberating over how to make our children aware of their Hindu heritage, while making sure they are not left out of the festive Christmas holiday.

I think about how Christmas will look when I have children. I imagine it will likely be the same as it is for my nieces and nephews—exactly the same as it was for me (without the retro clothing). And Diwali? Probably the same again: an Indian dinner and some new clothes, perhaps with the addition of Googling answers to questions about the origins of the holidays.

When I was 16 years old, I made the unprecedented decision to go to a temple-based Hindu summer camp. That two weeks with a sanyasi (religious guide/teacher) taught me more about Hinduism than all the holidays we every celebrated. It showed me that traditions and celebrations are simply that, whereas religion is all faith and beliefs. I imagine teaching my children about the religion that is Hinduism, while enjoying our festive Christmas traditions.

Filter by:

• Resident status (work permit, student visa, citizen, temporary visa)
• Physical status (normal, physically challenged)
• Complexion (fair, very fair, wheatish, wheatish brown, dark)
• Profile created by (self, parents, siblings, relatives, friends)
• Occupation… nonprofit is not an option.

To humour certain family members who think TamilMatrimony.com would be an appropriate online “dating” site for me, and because I was certain it would make good blog fodder, I decided to try a realistic search for myself.  Not just because I’m Tamil, but also because according to them (bharatmatrimony is the umbrella org):

Initial impressions, check out the default search options.  See if you can spot the difference!

So continuing to play along, I tried to pick the options that would be the most likely to reveal someone I would get along with and bring me down to a manageable number: New York, profile created by self, unmarried (the default option), with photo, and citizen since they’re more likely to have been in the US for a while…

I managed to get myself from thousands down to 169.

I’ve regretfully decided that posting photos would be mean, but the first photo that came up, my “featured profile,” was wearing black sunglasses though.  In his words…

I am looking for a simple and honest life partner from a decent family. Please go through my profile and see whether I can be a potential match for you.

Therefore, I describe a happy family just like a healthy plant, if I give water, sun and air, it blossoms.

Even better, according  to the standard questions on his profile… his blood type is AB (my favorite kind!!!), his family is of type “nuclear” (also my favorite kind!!!), his dad’s occupation is “business” and his mom’s is housewife.  His preferred dress style (yes, it’s a standard question!) is “casual wear”.

NEXT

Sorting through a lot of one sentence profiles, preferred dress casual AND formal (!!!) this seems to be the best option for me!  I especially love strict and serious life people.

I am a fun loving, outspoken, traditional, God fearing and caring individual. I am very strict and serious when it comes to life, I love watching movies, playing games, and spend the time with my family.

I was born and brought up in the suburb of Kolkata until 1996 and since then We are living in the city of New York. Currently, We own a house and an apartment in NYC and Kolkata respectively

We have day to day contacts with all the friends and brothers and sisters and cousins of my parents and mine living in different places of U.S. and India. I am very much involved with all such sensitivity as expected from a grass-rooted Bengali.

My parents would return to Kolkata ASAP and I also intend to return to India within a few years although nothing has yet been finalised. This is most important to note before proceeding for a marital relation.

I am the only child of my parents and I love and respect them more than anything. I would like my partner to be the same way and very caring and understanding. Since marriage is a knot between two families, it is very much necessary to know each other as much as possible..

Now, I will admit that I did not take the effort to filter my options even further.  I can filter by interests!  For example, I could pick someone who is “humorous” (the others are all strict and serious), or a Teetotaler!  Or perhaps someone who is “well settled” (I don’t even know what that means).

• Family oriented (128)
• Well educated (117)
• Health conscious (107)
• Loves music (106)
• Loves food (104)
• Ardent Reader (86)
• Nature lover (86)
• Humorous (84)
• Teetotaler (69)
• Affectionate (59)
• Down to earth (52)
• Romantic (50)
• Passion for photography (41)
• Spiritual (29)
• Well settled (29)
• Artistic (22)
• Loves pets (14)
• Loves poetry (8)

For the sake of this blog, I then peruse some of the “post by parents”.

Despite 23 years abroad, firm roots in Indian culture and values. Strict vegetarian, non smoker and teetotaller.

MBA from UC, Berkeley, MS from UC, Irvine, BS from UT, Austin, Texas, all with distinction and honors.

Currently, Director, MNC, San Francisco.

Family:

We are Upper middle class Brahmin Iyer family., ready to marry into any respectable and cultured Tamil speaking Brahmin family. Father of boy held leadership positions in Government and later in private sector and retired as CEO, MNC, Malaysia. Mother, MA, MLitt, BEd, all in Economics, is home maker. Younger brother , BS, MBA, VP in MNC in USA., is happily married to Iyer girl, working as Director in MNC,USA.

Looking for:

Life partner, committed to marriage as a lifelong pleasant and permanent relationship, open minded, frank, not moody, not secretive, out going, cheerful, compassionate, caring, loving, accommodative, quickly identifying herself with family of husband, family oriented, wants to have children and family, where ready to play lead role, modern and yet practicing our religion, customs and practices at required situations and functions, firm belief in God, respecting and supportive of elders and eager to bring up children with vegetarian food habits and our religious values, customs and practices, supportive of research pursuits of husband, ready to live always with husband at his place and permanently in USA.

Horoscope match a must!!  (this is a complex procedure where you hire an astrologer to look at your day, time, etc of birth and compare it to the other person’s to decide if this is a good match…)  And at the very, very, bottom of the entire profile after reading about siblings, family, favorite cuisine and type of dress, a reiteration of the parents’ desires, there is one little paragraph:

Boy is looking for an understanding and adjusting life companion, with whom he can build a family and a trusted relationship and a life together of their own, an open, understanding and an accommodative person, who can be a source of inspiration and happiness.

I wish them all the best!  I’m pretty sure the man of my dreams is not waiting around on TamilMatrimony.com.  However, he could be on OverweightShaadi.com!

To avoid the wrath of Kedar, I’m posting an article that he sent me a while back.  I mean, it is very interesting and I would post it wrath or none!

The article summarizes some interesting stats about the 3.2 million Indians living in America, compared to other Asians.  So I made some graphs!  The most interesting to me is the amount of people that speak languages other than Hindi.  Tamil is up there.

Also, I didn’t realize how huge the Filipino immigration to the US was.  They have the highest number of immigrant visas issued to them in the last decade (followed by India), and highest estimated number of undocumented immigrants. It was curious to me since I assume the population of the Philippines is relatively small so I graphed the number of undocumented immigrants given in this article, divided by the population of the country (in per mil, not percent).  What I really would have wanted is the number of immigrant visas relative to the number of applications.. but I don’t know how to find that.

Up to 2009, Taiwanese and Indian Americans led all Asian groups in higher educational attainment, with 73% to 68 %, respectively, having a bachelor’s degree or higher.  I was curious about how this Indian group breaks out (mostly I was shocked it wasn’t higher), so for 2010 I did see that male Indians have 75% bachelor’s degree attainment and female Indians only have 66%. I tried breaking this down for people born in India vs born in the US but no such luck.

I did get a few other numbers though while I was on the government’s website.  29% of Indians in the US were born here.  There’s an almost equal male-to-female ratio of Indians born here, vs foreign born ones (appx 51/49).  46% of the foreign born Indians entered the US after 2000, but I think that is logical since this includes people on immigrant visas so presumably looking at the current decade, any time, you would have skewed numbers since people will have left the US who came in in previous decades.

And in case you’re curious, here’s median income.  In 2010 the median annual earnings for a male born in the US was appx $49K (female $37K) and for a foreign born male was appx $36K (female $31K).