While Divya unpacked the made-in-china ornaments with undeserving reverence, mom served us hot toma
to soup and I unfurled the leaves of a beautiful evergreen tree that at 5 feet was a riot of furry plastic branches. And just as I was about to pick up the first ornament that came to my hand and hang it up on the branch nearest to me, I heard Divya go 'waaaaaaaait!' In the next ten minutes with Monica-like precision she lined up all the little ornaments on a chair grouping together similar ones. Out came a camera and an infectious sense of enthusiasm that soon had all of us at home (including my very blasé brother) hanging up the first ornaments and trying not to pose.And as dad put up the little red stocking we gave him, he told us bout the time he wanted to buy us this lovely Christmas tree he saw when posted in Sri Lanka but which was a stretch on his Army Major's salary. And mum recalled the time we baked a cake with enough rum to cause a hangover! And as we talked, I thought about Christmas, as I knew it in all the years that we had celebrated it.
Thanks to friends who are Christian by birth and warm hearted by choice I have the nicest memories of Christmas. It was in all their homes that I watched all the little ceremonies of Christmas come together to create an unbeatable holiday season of tradition, anticipation and togetherness. I've seen some beautiful antique tree ornaments go up on the branches of a real Christmas tree and soaked in the smells of flour, fruit and rum melting into each other in the oven. I've seen the tree angel put up with much ceremony and tasted my first sip of ginger wine. I've reached friends' places early in the morning to help with getting their home all spruced up and stayed until night watching guests come and go, talking over glasses of wine and juggling brightly coloured gift wrapped boxes.
Growing up temporarily changes some of this quaint festivity when the wonder of a kid gives way to the brashness of a teenager and Christmas is reduced to Boxing Day dance nights in the club. But my favourite mental picture of Christmas is of Sid (my brother), Nikhil and me sitting on the sofa in his house next to the tree warm in our winter nightclothes tearing away at gift wrapping while our parents looked on and Nana set up an early morning snack of milk and cake.
The anticipation and excitement of waking up on Christmas morning to see if Santa had indeed managed to find the exact thing you had asked for was unbeatable. And since we didn't have a Christmas tree we'd have to troop off to Nikhil's house to find the gifts kept under his tree by our parents. Lego toys were sometimes replaced by Funskool building blocks and Peaches and Cream Barbie was substituted by a humble My first Barbie. But these were insignificant details in the larger canvas of an eagerly anticipated time of the year.
As army kids living in a random-dot-on-the-map place like Bhuj in the 1980's there was little or no Christmas-in-the-air feeling that big cities with bright serial lights and brighter sale signs have. But this was more than made up for by the elaborate pre-Christmas preparations…picking raisins and pistachios off kilos of dry fruits chopped up and soaked in an obscene amount of rum…intense debating and decision making as to which toy we should ask for followed by letters written to Santa and then checked by mum and dad who would then promise to pass it on…all in all it was a 'hectic' holiday season. :)
I especially remember this one time when Santa came 'army style' in a helicopter landing on the mess lawns and kicking up quite a storm. His sack stuffed with gifts bought by our parents. Even after we outgrew Santa and exaggerated kiddy Christmas parties, it still remained a special festival. I loved to watch Rajesh uncle put up ornaments on the tree and neatly wrap little bars of amul chocolate in glitter paper to hang as tree gifts. I especially liked the serene tree angel he used to lovingly put right on top of the real fir tree.
Images of so many many Christmases came back to me as I put up my very own tree and it occurred to me that so much of what a festival stands for, is ceremony. Little traditions that we might or might not know the origins of but that are even today a wonderful way to make small actions and times memorable. Besides the special joy of putting up my own tree I now have an even more special memory of doing it with people who made it so much fun. It made me see that festivals and occasions are not all about religion. In today's world maybe it's a little simpler if you just see it as a holiday, a break from the routine to do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Make your own tradition to carry forward the next year and add a coupla more pictures to the already overfull hard disk on the computer.
That simple act of putting up a tree made me want to bake a cake, buy little gifts for people I know and throw a small party with some wine and food and before I know it, I am thinking of having a real tree next year…and party games...but that's far away, for now I am jus happy to turn on the lights on the tree and watch the glow light up the serene face of the tree angel and savour the thought of a holiday, family and friends, the smell of baking and the sight of the lights on the tree and the whole special sensory experience that a festival brings.
