The Christian community is celebrating Christmas, perhaps more joyously this season so as to get over the trauma and the gloom of the Covid...
The Christian community is celebrating Christmas, perhaps more joyously this season so as to get over the trauma and the gloom of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, most churches did not have the traditional midnight mass, and parishioners of many city churches were requested to call early so that they could be allotted seats in churches observing a very strict social distancing. Many attended virtual prayer services, live streamed over the internet through dedicated portals or social media such as Facebook and YouTube.
As happens always in India, festivals are joyous not just for the community that may hold that day holy. Everyone else joins in, greeting friends professing that faith, but themselves also rejoicing in the “secular” aspects of the celebration. Everyone lights a candle on Diwali, and looks forward to special Eid dishes. Ahead of Christimas, the queues at cake shops in cities such as Delhi and Kolkata are quite likely to have more Hindus and Sikhs than Christians.
The “Christmas tree”, a painting on a sheet of paper or a branch lopped off the neighbour’s tree, decorated with tinsel and blobs of cotton wool, will be seen in many home with young children. The power of television and internet, one could...
