Christmas day, always bring back memories of my earliest Christmas celebrations. In my school in Pune, which is a Convent school, we celebrated Christmas with much aplomb. The last day of school preceding the Christmas vacations was the 'Christmas Party'. Each class in the school had to decorate the class with the Christmas theme, cotton was used to depict snow. The good old babool tree came into use as the Christmas tree. The desks & chairs were shifted from their usual rows & placed at the back of the class. All windows decorated with the brightest colored paper, mistletoes were cut out & painted. I also remember that the four house-boards (the ones that were at the top of the central staircase that started from in front of the office) between class 7 & 8 were also decorated according to the holiday season.
We also had the Christmas story enacted by us, and when I was in class 2 or 3 I was one of the shepherds. Dressed in a house gown, black poster paint in place of a beard, a cloth covering the head & a stick procured from I don't know where...There was baby Jesus, Mother Mary, Joseph, the three kings, pleanty of farm animals & not forgetting the little mule that carried Mother Mary. Wow as I write this the entire thing just swam across my eyes!!
After school, Christmas was only a holiday in the regular student life, no real involvement with anything Christmassy.
When I had left India 4 years back, the mall-culture had only begun & thus the typical Christmas theme Malls were not there. But at the same time the highly developed mall scenario took me by storm here. I was delighted to see all the malls decked up as per the festival of the season; be it Deepawali, Eid, Christmas, the malls were always there to remind me what festival was approaching.
Now that my son is growing up I want to do something Christmassy so that he understands & respects the entire purpose of Christmas. Well not just Christmas, I would like to make every festival in every faith a special day in order to let him grow into a person who respects all religions & has full knowledge of the traditions, customs of each faith.
One thing that I remember very well from my school days is that my Principal Sister Mark, would say that it is not correct to mention Christmas as 'Xmas' because Christmas is there because of Christ, & if we use an 'X' instead of 'Christ' you are cutting out Christ from Christmas. So I do not use the short form & always use Christmas in full.
Merry Christmas to you all !!
We also had the Christmas story enacted by us, and when I was in class 2 or 3 I was one of the shepherds. Dressed in a house gown, black poster paint in place of a beard, a cloth covering the head & a stick procured from I don't know where...There was baby Jesus, Mother Mary, Joseph, the three kings, pleanty of farm animals & not forgetting the little mule that carried Mother Mary. Wow as I write this the entire thing just swam across my eyes!!
After school, Christmas was only a holiday in the regular student life, no real involvement with anything Christmassy.
When I had left India 4 years back, the mall-culture had only begun & thus the typical Christmas theme Malls were not there. But at the same time the highly developed mall scenario took me by storm here. I was delighted to see all the malls decked up as per the festival of the season; be it Deepawali, Eid, Christmas, the malls were always there to remind me what festival was approaching.
Now that my son is growing up I want to do something Christmassy so that he understands & respects the entire purpose of Christmas. Well not just Christmas, I would like to make every festival in every faith a special day in order to let him grow into a person who respects all religions & has full knowledge of the traditions, customs of each faith.
One thing that I remember very well from my school days is that my Principal Sister Mark, would say that it is not correct to mention Christmas as 'Xmas' because Christmas is there because of Christ, & if we use an 'X' instead of 'Christ' you are cutting out Christ from Christmas. So I do not use the short form & always use Christmas in full.
Merry Christmas to you all !!
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