No place like Sri Lanka for Christmas
As we approach Christmas, my mind goes back to the days of Christmas past.
Christmas in Sri Lanka is not just a religious festival when Christians are expected to go to church and celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ. To most of us who live on this island – whether we are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews, devotees of Sai Baba, adherents of Subud, devout atheists, confirmed agnostics or those who belong to no religious persuasion whatsoever - Christmas is a time of celebrating with our Christian friends. Sri Lanka is a small island, and although Christians make up less than seven per cent of our population, virtually all of us have Christian friends and many of us have Christian relatives.
I purposely mentioned all the religions above because over the years I myself have been privileged to acquire a collection of friends belonging to every one of the groups I have listed – and I can recall many Christmas days when I have shared a meal and a drink in a group that included folk of these various religious denominations. We were united not by a particular religious label - but by a common faith in the goodness of human beings and a love of good company and good cheer.
The same applied to visiting the homes of friends during Thai Pongal, Aluth Avurudda, Deepavali and Id-ul-Fitr. Being Sri Lankans, all we needed was an excuse to get together and (as the Jews say) “break bread together”, to simply celebrate the joy of being among friends. It is so nice to see many friends who now live abroad returning to our island in December just to be back home at this festive season. Like the migratory birds from Siberia who unerringly come back here around this time, these folk who went overseas in search of pastures new now keep coming back because, as my now Americanised pal Dennis Chanmugam says, “There’s no place in the world like Sri Lanka at Christmas-time.”
I remember many years ago – during what we now refer to as ‘the good old days’ (when we were not so old and probably not so good) - going carol singing with Dennis. It was Christmas Eve and we were both at the home of one of our friends (mainly because we knew from long experience that his mother used to make some of the best Christmas cake in town) when our host showed us an old Santa Claus costume that he had discovered among the Christmas decorations in his house. Dennis suddenly said, “Machang, let’s go carol singing”. We succeeded in locating some cyclostyled booklets with the words of popular carols. One of our pals had an accordion, another managed to scrounge a guitar from somewhere – and with the rest of the group enthusiastically joining in we made up a respectable group of carollers. It did not matter that the sum total of Christians in the group was just three – or even that not everybody knew all the tunes and that in the dark it was not easy to read the words on the hymn sheets. What we lacked in familiarity with the music and words we made up in enthusiasm!
All of us had a great time going to various houses in the neighbourhood and regaling the local population with Christmassy carols. As a bonus, we were fed at most of the homes at which we sang – Christmas cake, breudher, bolo fiadho, coconut rock, biscuits, murukku and other Sri Lankan delicacies, washed down with Ginger beer, Orange barley, Portello or even (on a couple of lucky occasions) the occasional glass of milk wine. The people in one house gave us some money in an envelope and asked us for what charity we were collecting – to which our “Santa Claus” Dennis replied, giving back the money, “Aunty, we are not collecting money – but we wouldn’t mind another piece of that fabulous Christmas cake you have made!”
Talking with Dennis recently I reminded him of that occasion. While we were reminiscing – recalling friends from the past, remembering homes we used to haunt and discussing whose parents used to make the best Christmas eats – he suddenly, in his usual impulsive manner, said “Shall we do it again this year?”
So if this Christmas you spot a group of not so young carollers in your neighbourhood enthusiastically singing what sound like Christmas carols, forgive us our trespasses and our tunelessness, give us a smile and a wave and (if you have any in the house), even a piece of Christmas cake .....
May you all have a Christmas season of Happiness and Connectedness.