Traditions

My rough patches with God seem to be coming in droves because mainly I ignore them and assume they're done and dusted. Or they ARE done and dusted but I am eternally inventive problem-wise... I feel bad not talking about it and talking about lighter stuff... a bit like True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet... I'm obviously making my usual messes but happily going to the fair. But I can and shall go to the fair because an AA meeting is bloody boring when that's the diet ALL the time.

I've often been asked what Indian Christmases are... You know what? These are odd questions. It's a home Christmas, okay. The best kind ever ;D But I'm gonna try and paint a picture of what I'm missing (colossally) this year...

There are carols around a bonfire that the kids get excited about even though it's hardly cold. We have loads of biriyani - we visit each other without invites. We are disconcerted when people don't invite themselves... however silly and annoying a cousin can get, family's still family. We listen to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole and yes, dangit, BoneyM. We LOVE BoneyM this time of year... we still even sell them. However much freakish blondes in somehow voluptuous Santa hats scream out of magazine and CD covers, we will have 'Zion's Daughter' crooned over us. It has never mattered to us whether we weren't Christian professedly... We still prefer Jesus in a manger in a wisp of a girl's arms to Mariah Carey lilting for you for Christmas! Not to say it's not a lovely song - but we're mainly homebodies and maybe we quite like tradition.

Christmas to me conjures up memories of my mum shining with make-believe stories and my dad grunting amused agreement to Santa's sleighbells... Of one memory of a distant bell and a telephone call and a completely empty street that clings to my mind like suction pads on the end of tentacles! When my dad picked up a phone but no one answered, of how it came a minute after I heard those random bells (either because they were ringing or my mum fabricated them into my easy imagination) -- and what stays with me is the fact that I (still) can't forget its excitement :) Christmas conjures up memories of whispering 'Merry Christmas' across the pew to the family - while the Bishop preached. Of hearing my father so-nearly honk his horn at 11 pm in our colony because I am STILL in the bathroom looking at my face or dress or whatever needs the most attention! Of cutting into rich plumcake at 2 am. Of debating whether we open our presents now or at breakfast. And we always have this debate, instead of having decided one way or another over twenty years... I used to wonder why the heck we didn't work ourselves out a tradition and stick with it. Lol - I guess the argument IS tradition!

Some traditions have taken a beating, some stuck around. Some ideas, my father says, should be passed on to me now. Me - I don't like change. If they didn't want to do it, why'd they do it just for me? I ask. And why should I do it when appa's done it every year.... ooohh no, now that is change. So some years we don't put the seed in soon enough for the grain to sprout in front of our little crib. And some years we don't decorate all the windows in time for Christmas eve... And we have our tugs-of-war... And we have family. And family goes like this:
Every year, my dad says: "Finally, Pilgrim can put that tree up now she's all grown up!"
Every year, I say: "But no! We're supposed to do it together!"
And every year, my mum says: "Hey, don't look at me!" or more literally, "Naana? Iye! :P"
And every year, that tree goes up!

In my Christmas prayer, every year of course, I remember to be glad because Christmas CAN be special to our family... because in all the tradition, its joy of birth and beginnings has meaning in our personal lives!