Skip to main content

My Christmas


Christmas was the most joyful season of my childhood. The study table would become the base of the crib that father made every year more or less in the same style. Palm leaves for the sides and roof. The bed was made up of a kind of grass which was known as Unneesopullu (Infant Jesus grass) since it was abundant in the Christmas season. [Now I find it pretty tedious to cut off that grass which invades my garden like heartless marauders in December.]

The Christmas carol group from the parish church and the midnight Mass were all part of my childhood delights of the season. The petromax lamp carried by the carol team was one of my chief attractions. There would be some fireworks too to add to the delight.

The most memorable Christmas of my life was in 1978. I was in Kotagiri as a student of religion. One of my teachers took me along with a few others to a nearby church in the evening to listen to carols. It was the first time I heard such spellbinding rendition of carols. Silent Might and Hark the herald angels still ring in my nostalgic memories. There was magic in that music. It took me to a different world altogether. To the realm of angels.

Angels are an integral part of Christmas. That’s the most charming thing about Christmas for me. Heaven descends to touch me with its tender wings. Even when I lost my religious faith, Christmas continued to exert a heavenly charm on my soul. Christmas carols continue to add grace to my existence. Angels become real through them and they soothe the ancient wounds in my soul.

Christmas heals. Every Christmas is an invitation to a new birth. As T S Eliot would say, Christmas is the fruition of a long and painful journey that puts an end to the old dispensation. Christmas is an invitation to the death of the old and the birth of the new. It does matter that the New Year follows Christmas accentuating the importance of a new birth.

PS. A Christmas short story of mine: A mad man’s Christmas

 

 

Comments

  1. JaiDecember 25, 2022 at 11:31 AM

    Excellent write up Tom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanDecember 25, 2022 at 4:51 PM

    Hari OM
    And thus it can be rightly said, there is a magic in Christmas! Blessings and Love to you, dear blogpal. May you have a peaceful and gentle day! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 25, 2022 at 7:05 PM

      Thanks Yam. You are an added delight in my life. 😊

      Delete
  3. rupam sarmaDecember 26, 2022 at 3:19 PM

    Beautifully written. Merry Christmas , Greetings

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
26 comments
Read more

Hollow Leaders

A century ago, T S Eliot wrote about the hollowness of his countrymen in a poem titled The Hollow Men . The World War I had led to a lot of disillusionment with the collapse of powerful empires and the savagery of the war itself which unleashed barbaric slaughter. The generation that survived was known as the “Lost Generation.” Before the war, Western civilisation was sustained by certain values and principles given by religion, the Enlightenment, and Victorian morality. The war showed that science and technology, which could improve life, had actually produced machine guns, gas warfare, and mass death. Religion became hollow. People became hollow. “We are the hollow men,” Eliot’s poem began. The civilisation looked sophisticated from outside, but it was empty inside. There is a lot of religion today in the world. My country has allegedly become so religious that it decides what you will eat, wear, which god you will pray to, and even the language for communication. The ultimat...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Why India Needs to Reclaim its Liberal Soul

Russia’s Putin announced the demise of liberalism, America’s Trump wrote its obituary, and India’s Modi wielded the death as a political forge that transmuted him into a demigod. We are, unfortunately, passing through an era of so-called “strong leaders” like Putin, Trump, and Modi. A 2024 report based on a 2023 Pew survey found that 67% Indians endorsed a governing system with a “strong leader” who can make decisions without interference from courts or parliament. This support for autocracy was the highest among all surveyed nations and has increased consistently after Modi became the PM. Shockingly, the same 2023 survey found that 72% of Indian respondents expressed a favourable view of military rule. Indians don’t want individual freedom, it seems. We are used to the many gods who incarnated at appropriate times and destroyed evil ( Sambhavami yuge yuge ). Modi is our present divine incarnation. It is the duty of these avatars to conquer evil; hence individual freedom doesn’t ...
13 comments
Read more