Christmas is synonymous with joy and peace. That first Christmas night, when the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the universal message was “Peace to people of Goodwill”. It was not just for Christians, but for all human beings.
True friendship again is something that surpasses human barriers. It is like love that defies all logic! In that sense Christmas too is a time of friendship. In today’s polarized world, be it in the USA or India, we need the bonds of true and lasting friendship.
I live in Kanpur, U.P., where Christians are a miniscule minority. Yet we find that at Christmas our churches are flooded with visitors who are not Christian. Similarly, almost every Christian home; be it rich or poor, has a beeline of visitors. Christmas is like a magnet that attracts.
From early childhood I recall a stream of visitors to our home at Christmas. But there was a sad moment at Christmas 1992. Behind our home on the Mall Road we had several tenants, both Hindu and Muslim, in what is known as Mughal Sarai*. Every Christmas they came together, in friendship, as one human family. Not so in 1992, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and never since. It was my saddest Christmas.
But a joyous memory of Christmas was the Christmas Card. Long lost friends and relatives would come alive at Christmas through this form of friendship. For years I kept a list of the cards that I had received and sent. That too has changed over time. This year I have not received a single Christmas Card! Somehow WhatsApp and Face Book messages are never the same, which is why I am not on neither. Society is the poorer for it.
Carol singers, going from house to house, was another expression of friendship. Neighbours would joyously join in. Sadly, this year, because of the Corona pandemic, most churches have cancelled their carol singing. This year we are not even sure if we will have any visitors to our home. We can neither invite them nor tell them not to come.
This year will not be a White Christmas, but a blighted one. Yet we hope and pray that even in these adverse circumstances the eternal flame of friendship will continue to burn brightly as did the Star of Bethlehem.
- The writer’s family is the oldest Christian family in Kanpur where they settled over 160 years ago
DECEMBER 2020
* P.S. A newspaper report of March 1931 states that after the hanging of Bhagat Singh and the subsequent assassination of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi while trying to quell a communal riot in Kanpur (whose martyrdom no less a person than Mahatma Gandhi expressed the desire to emulate) my father had gone out with his gun, and without any police protection, to save these same people living in a mixed mohalla.
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