Christmas traditions

25 December 2018.

I am supposed to wake up real early tomorrow and yet tonight, sleep evades me for a little longer than the usual. It is Christmas Eve and the hour hand of the clock is dangerously close to striking midnight.

There is a movement at the window and I suddenly turn around with a grin on my face. ‘Santa Claus!’ I whisper to myself, old enough to know he doesn’t exist and yet young enough to realise the magic of this night will never die.

Christmas has been a festival close to my heart since childhood. It has been the night when my immediate family gathers around a potted plant and builds it up into a Christmas tree. Each year, we pull out the same decorations, perhaps even arranging them in the same way as always. An angel holding a star wand (drawn by me at the age of eight!) stands atop the tree, completing the picture; allowing me to relive a childhood moment. For as long as I can remember, each Christmas Eve has been exactly this way… Dinner, followed by a flurry of decorations amidst Boney M crooning “Mary’s Boy Child”. And just around the stroke of midnight, lighting up the tree and sighing at the sheer beauty of the spectacle we had put together as a family.

Years ago, we started out with a money plant that resembled the shape of a Christmas tree, and eventually moved on to a real Christmas tree. Each year, the struggle of bringing the potted piece of joy down so many stairs, breaking our backs under the weight of it. Each year, the same ol’ cassette getting us grooving! Once more, reaching out to the back of the cupboard and pulling out a stocking to hang up near the tree. And every Christmas morning, running down to check what Santa had left for me.

For so many years, I knew it were my parents picking out small gifts to fill up the stocking, and yet a Christmas morning when they decided I was too old for it, a disappointment spread through me. But endless Christmas movies painstakingly watched from the start of December reminded me (and still do!) that the belief must not die.

A few years ago, we moved on from a real tree to a Christmas tree shaped out of books. Since childhood, I have always been surrounded by books. Each gift wrapped present hid a book. Each family bonding moment revolved around a book. The shelves, cupboards, rooms and basically every possible surface in the house still overflow with books. We have read them, we have collected them, we have loved them. Books have been a part of the family since forever. They have always held a magical attraction for me, for they built a world where everything was possible. I held them, slept with them, dreamt with them….

Books laid the foundation of my childhood, and that day, they also laid the foundation of our family Christmas tree. The magic of Christmas that began through discovering the story of Jesus Christ through an Amar Chitra Katha book had now built itself into an entire tree.

A tree of knowledge, memories and a Christmas family tradition…

And although tonight I am not home, pulling out those same ol’ decorations, I still ensure that I reach out for the Boney M album and sing myself to sleep on the tunes of “Mary’s Boy Child”!

It is a ‘meri’ Christmas, indeed.