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Merry Christmas and Happy Gurpurab

by I.J. SINGH

 

Christmas comes but once a year.  But it takes over our lives, along with our budgets and credit ratings, even though, like many Americans, I am not even a nominal Christian. 

Christmas is a bonanza for retailers and sales outlets. People go into debt to buy what they neither need, nor want, nor can afford. 

The day after Christmas, the fever breaks.  Shoppers line up hours before stores open, to return the gifts that they neither needed, nor wanted, nor could afford.

This Christmas virus sees not that one may be a devout deist, while the other is a committed agnostic or atheist. It makes no distinction between an observant Christian and Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Sikh.  No one is immune.  

Businesses love it; they live and die by it.

Periodically and predictably, debates erupt on whether we are a Christian nation or not.  Many of the foundational values, culture and laws of this society stem from Christianity. This nation's founding fathers were practicing Christians; nevertheless, the Constitution is clear in separating church and state. 

We all know that Christmas honors the birth of Christ, even though no one really knows for certain exactly when Jesus was born.

Much of what is now integral to the celebration of Christmas derives its origin from ancient pre-Christian traditions.  For example, many millennia ago, Mesopotamians celebrated New Year with a twelve-day festival; thus the Twelve Days of Christmas. Saturnalia, of the ancient Romans, lasted from the middle of December to the first of January, when they decorated homes and exchanged gifts. 

To the Roman emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity, political realities mandated the merging of pagan and Christians celebrations.  Though rooted in pagan practices, Christmas is now inseparably woven into the fabric of Christianity and our cultural ethos.   It knits together diverse people and many esoteric faiths and festivals.

Minorities do not live a secluded existence inside impenetrable barriers - that would become an unacceptable ghetto.  Majoritarian cultural practices continue to seep into the traditions of minority communities.  And quite expectedly, minorities often adjust their holidays somewhat, to piggyback on the celebrations of the majority community. 

Divali, for instance, stems from Hindu mythology, with tenuous connection to Sikhi, and none to Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Yet, irrespective of religious persuasion, it would be a rare Indian who did not observe this national holiday. 

In India, it is Divali that intrudes into Sikh space and colors its traditions; in the West, it is Christmas. 

No one is an island.

Sometimes, vagaries of the calendar assist the mix.  Such timing transformed a minor Jewish holiday that falls in December, Hanukkah, into a major commemoration that, at least in the Jewish community, rivals Christmas. 

In the Indian lunar calendar, the birthday - gurpurab (literally, day of the Guru) - of the tenth Sikh Master, Guru Gobind Singh, falls close to Christmas.  That allows us to merge Sikh celebration with Christmas and its practices - dinners, lighting of houses, and exchange of presents.  We can then practice our own tradition without standing out as a sore thumb.

In not so good a pun, Bill Kilner suggested that if Christmas combined with Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the resulting holiday could be renamed "Yule be sorry."

In days gone by, wearing a red turban, I, too, have, at times, filled in for Santa Claus at children's parties; my friends and I quipped that I was a younger, trimmer version.

Some thirty years ago, when a celebration of Christmas surrounded us, my not quite three-year-old daughter wanted a Christmas tree.  Our dilemma was how best to join in the overwhelming celebration while enmeshing Sikh heritage in it, but without diminishing either tradition.

So, we settled upon what was then a novel idea.  We shopped around for a bagful of religious markers from many different faiths of mankind as ornaments for the tree, and topped it with a foil-covered replica of a Sikh marker (khanda); thus was our own ecumenical Christmas tree assembled.

That tree also adorned our personally designed New Year greeting cards.  The many questions emanating from friends and neighbors made for an unrivaled opportunity for building bridges.

Does this piggybacking dilute the message?  Perhaps, but not the spirit or the intent; it helps us to see the universal connectivity that underlies our common humanity.

So my friends, a Merry Christmas... and a Wonderful Gurpurab, Kwanza, Hanukkah to all!

 

[This column is the complete version of the piece that originally appeared in The Washington Post on December 21, 2008.] 

 

December 25, 2008 

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