Happy Christmas in advance, dear readers. Besides feasting on fruit-rich Christmas cake, pears and cherries made of marzipan, and hot cocoa, one of our childhood rituals was to re-read our favourite Christmas stories in the holidays. Be it Enid Blyton or Agatha Christie, we found that few popular writers could resist telling a Christmas story.
The bottom line is that you may be allergic to rude and intrusive evangelists, but what’s not to love about Jesus? My grandmother had a small European art picture of mother Mary holding baby Jesus in her puja room. My mother, a staunch Hindu, gave me Bible stories to read along with other storybooks, and one day she pointed out that ‘the poor are at the heart of the gospel’.
I loved singing carols and hymns so much that I still remember them from childhood. My maami used to play the piano and threw a Christmas party every year just so we could gather around and sing while she played. I even mugged up the Paternoster or Our Father prayer in Latin because I found it beautiful. India, that way, is like a great big box of chocolates for us that we are free to participate in and enjoy different traditions without fear.
Out North, Christmas has long become a Hindu festival. Santa hats, Christmas trees, star-shaped paper lamps and Christmas cake are hugely popular with Hindu families. It does not make them ‘less Hindu’. Hindus just enjoy any festival with an endearing basis and charming traditions, be it Christmas or Valentine’s Day.
And in a culture that celebrates the birth of one holy child, Sri Krishna, the advent of another holy child fits right in. Hindus completely ‘get it’ that there was once a Jewish man called Yeshua who taught ‘God is love’ and was cruelly punished for it, that a cult grew in his name and became a major world religion. ‘God is love’ closely resonates with the Hindu perception of God as a loving, compassionate entity.
Where the Hindu path diverges from Christianity is nobody is expected to ‘save’ Hindus. They have to work out their own salvation and attain moksha, or release, from the cycle of birth and death by their own conduct. This brings us to the fundamental difference between Hinduism and Christianity. The Christian belief is humans are all sinners and that’s why Jesus came as the promised Messiah to save them through his own death. But Hindus do not believe they are sinners. Each of them is here to work off their individual karma.
The driving principle of the Hindu faith is ananda or joy, which makes them a singing, dancing, celebratory people. Their spiritual goal is to disappear into the light of God, which Hindu philosophy describes as sat chit ananda, the supreme bliss of feeling as one with God and all creation. But the two faiths wholly agree on seva or humanitarian service as the activity most pleasing to God.
We find this sentiment expressed identically in both faiths. It is declared in Jubin Nautiyal’s 2024 hit song, ‘Pata nahi kis roop mein aakar Narayan mil jayega’ meaning ‘We don’t know in which form God will appear to us’. It is found in Leo Tolstoy’s evergreen story from the 19th century about the old shoemaker who dreams Jesus will visit him on Christmas Day. He looks out eagerly from his basement window at the feet passing by. He gets up several times to offer food and cheer to poor, careworn people. But where is Jesus? He goes to bed disappointed but then has a wonderful dream that sets him right. He hears Jesus say he came to him in each of the needy people he helped.
The root of this heartwarming story is in the New Testament, in Matthew 25:35-40: ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
Another common factor between Sanatan Dharma, Sikhism and Christianity is the exaltation of music as an ideal way to express devotion to God. The Church in the West has brilliant music, with composer Johannes Bach famously declaring that the noblest music was that in praise of God while Mozart’s High Mass compositions leave you stunned with their intense, almost unbearable beauty.
My favourite western classical music story is about Handel’s opera, Creation. The composer, a deeply religious man, set the story of Creation to music as found in the first book of the Bible (Genesis), with shades of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The work premiered in Vienna in April 1798. When the chorus sang, “And God said, ‘Let there be Light,’” such a divine blast of music ensued that the audience gasped in shock and awe—and collectively burst into tears.
Storywise, it is considered a straightforward opera without much action, but the composer is said to have valued it very much as a personal benchmark. Indeed, so many ways to celebrate Jesus.
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)
Renuka Narayanan