CHENNAI: In the hills, girdling the roads, Christmas was a month-long festival. The church perched on the hill-top, swelled with the strumming of guitar, thrumming of drums, and the tunes of chorus. Houses on the sparsely populated area had illuminating stars hung on either bamboo trees or on the rooftops. And on Christmas day, the entire community would gather for the holy mass followed by a sumptuous lunch — a feast brimming with non-vegetarian cuisines.
The congregation in the church sang every year, ‘We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year’. These were the memories of Christmas in the north-eastern state, Nagaland.
As I moved to south, the ways of celebrating looked different to some degree — from taste to people and culture, the undertone of Christmas also changed.
The preparation for this grand festival starts weeks and months before. Akhil Gracious, an entrepreneur, says, growing up in an orthodox Christian family, Christmas was the main festival for them. “During Christmas holidays, we would go to either my dad’s or mom’s ancestral home.
A few days before the festival, we had to keep the Christmas tree and crib ready. One of the families would bring the materials for the crib. Unlike today, we made it from the scratch. We would gather green grass, dry them to make hay shed, place Mary, Joseph, kings, goat, stable, cover the top with dried palm leaves, and cut tree branches to make the basic structure.”
Wine, a prominent drink, a symbol of merriment, is made in many houses. Akhil says it was the children’s duty to cut the fruits; the main fruits used to make wine were rose apple, grapes, and pineapple.
The wine-making process started early in October. After crushing, the concoction was preserved in a pitcher under the soil for fermentation. Ann Leah Anthony, an IT specialist, says, “My grandparents would start the preparation of wine from October. We would keep it in earthen pots. By December, the wine would be fermented, and it’s perfect to have.”
For Leah, the aroma of freshly-made cake and the non-vegetarian food arrayed on the table wafting across the house, is one of the most familiar and fondest memories of Christmas. Get-togethers, today, is a rarity; people now barely prioritise celebrating together.
“Back then, till the time my grandmother was alive, on every Onam and Christmas, we used to have get-togethers. All her five kids and their families would come together. That is something that is missed.”
Akhil says, “At our grandparents’ place, after 25 days of noyembu (fast), we would have kallappam and beef curry, and break the fast. Our grandparents would feed us cake after the mass and it was a ritual.” Another practice that he fondly recalls is the story-telling time.
On Christmas, when food is prepared in the kitchen, grandparents and their 36 grandchildren would sit near the granary on the attic and listen to the stories of Mary and Jospeh, and the birth of Jesus.
“These are stories that are ingrained in our minds and we cannot forget them,” he says. In this session, elders’ memories are passed on to their children and grandchildren in the form of anecdotes. Leah says, “I have heard grandparents talk about their childhood — going for carols, singing songs, collecting money and buying things that they really wanted to buy for a long time.”
Besides these, carol groups visiting nearby houses is a long-standing tradition in many places. Megha Kurian, a journalist, shares instances from childhood. “We used to be very excited about carol singing. We used to sit looking through our windows and wait for them to come.
They would come in the middle of the night; we could hear the sounds from distance.” For Akhil, being part of carol, learning songs, learning the rhythms, going to church for rehearsals, going out with the carol team during cold nights of December and sipping hot chukku kaapi from flasks are moments that he longs he could get back again.
Megha says, “As soon as we come back from the mass, the first thing we do is we cut the cake. On Christmas, our breakfast would be paalappam and chicken stew or chicken curry. Having spent her childhood away from her hometown, she found joy in little things like family gatherings.
A grand dinner of grandparents, parents and grandchildren, she recalls, each one of them had a hand in making food.
The family jointly made kappa, beef curry, thorans, and cake. Megha says, her role was mostly chopping and managing crockeries. Akhil recalls, “After slaughtering, meat would be distributed to the entire village. It is usually children who would clean the meat.
Extracting coconut milk was also a rigorous task that was assigned to children.” Nikitha Rita, a content specialist, says excitedly, “We used to gather at my mom’s ancestral home; we kids would huddle together because it used to be cold. We would watch Harry Potter. Before lunch, we could get work like frying pappadams.”
While the youngsters recall their roles during the celebrtions, Susy Joseph, now 65, recounts “those happy memories” with her parents and two siblings. In those days, Christmas brought so much happiness.
Even today, she cherishes the memories of making of pulkoodu (Christmas crib), her mother generously giving food to people, her father buying them new clothes. She laments, “In those days, there were no differences. All of us would celebrate all festivals. Time has changed, the way of celebrating, too.”
For most people, Christmas was synonymous to church and cakes, and subtle celebrations. Rhea Miriam Varghese, a guest lecturer, says, going to her aunt’s place and having lunch together is a new tradition they are building. Bread pudding, she says, makes her nostalgic as she has been having it since her childhood.
The ways of celebration have changed over the years. While for some, celebrations are all about incessant clatters of crockeries, socialising, and food frenzy, for some celebrations are all about lean gatherings and having a quality time. Akhil’s grandparents would tell him that Christmas was a day of cleansing oneself, and this happens only by loving others. The connotation has now changed and every one has their own definition of Christmas and celebration today.