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.