The Lights of December

The crib of a nearby parish [a few years back]

December was the happiest month of my childhood. Christmas was the ostensible reason, though I wasn’t any more religious than the boys of my neighbourhood. Christmas brought an air of festivity to our home which was otherwise as gloomy as an orthodox Catholic household could be in the late 1960s. We lived in a village whose nights were lit up only by kerosene lamps, until electricity arrived in 1972 or so. Darkness suffused the agrarian landscapes for most part of the nights. Frogs would croak in the sprawling paddy fields and crickets would chirp rather eerily in the bushes outside the bedroom which was shared by us four brothers. Owls whistled occasionally, and screeched more frequently, in the darkness that spread endlessly. December lit up the darkness, though infinitesimally, with a star or two outside homes.

December was the light of my childhood. Christmas was the happiest festival of the period. As soon as school closed for the ten-day-long Christmas vacation, we would start constructing a huge crib on the spacious veranda of the old-style house of ours. Made of cycad (a palm-like tree) leaves and the long grass that grew abundantly in December, and bamboo reeds for pillars, the crib would carry cute figurines of infant Jesus, his parents, shepherds, the Magi, and an angel who held a banner that proclaimed peace to men of good will. There would be candle-lights too.

December was the light of my childhood. There were carols all around for a few days. Santa Claus came home with the parish carol team and danced merrily. We played with firecrackers, sparklers, fountains, and rockets – fireworks. The dark melancholy of normal life would stay away for many days in December.

I left my village in 1975 and returned to it in 2015, leaving aside the brief annual holidays in between. It’s no more a village now. Almost the whole of Kerala is now a like a single town that is stretched out rather dolefully over variegated landscapes which change their moods quite whimsically. There is plenty of light now in Kerala. But all that light looks too mechanical to stir the numb roots of life’s vitality. There are no people on the streets; there are only bright lights and rushing vehicles.

Has December lost its light? The trembling little star that lit my childhood has been replaced with dazzling LEDs and restless traffic. Back then, temples, churches, and mosques were not just religious centres, but hubs for community gatherings where fraternity was palpable. Today, even the lights have religions! 

PS. Written for Blogchatter’s weekly blog hop.