This website article for Christmas 2000 is offered by an Indian follower of Jesus Christ who has the mischievous notion that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is perhaps better understood in India (even by non-Christians) than it is in the West. On the other hand, the beautiful and deeply spiritual Christmas celebrations of Indian Christians often present a Jesus understood through western logical categories - not incorrect but somewhat anemic. Put differently, the temptation in the nominally Christian western countries is to have a Christmas without Christ. Hence the slogan there: 'Put Christ back into Christmas'. Even in India's big cities, Christmas for some principally means gift shopping, Santa Claus, lively parties and lots of fun together. Is one objecting to people having a good time at Christmas? Oh no, that would not be Indian at all! All the same, birthday parties presumably imply some strong awareness of the one whose birthday it is. The real temptation in eastern countries is subtly different. Even when, socially and spiritually, Christmas is celebrated in a manner appropriate to the birthday of Jesus, Christians too easily accept an understanding of Jesus which downplays his inner experience. What Jesus understood about himself - and about the inner life of the one he knew as loving Father - came precisely from his prayer and meditation. Inner experience is the strength of eastern traditions. Jesus and those who wrote the earlier Christian scriptures were clearly easterners, but the Christian Church moved faster and more powerfully into countries west of the Middle East. Hence, till today Greek and Roman ways of thinking about Jesus are dominant. The real point of this website article, then, is to provoke and intelligently stimulate good thinking. This is not the place for a full and adequate theological analysis. Hopefully, however, enough will be sent to render reasonable, what many may otherwise find merely novel. The basic thrust is that the significance of Jesus as 'Son of God' born into a human family is brightened and sharpened through categories drawn from India's ADVAITIC traditions. The only love between persons that does justice to reality is 'non-dual' (in that sense, ADVAITIC). That is a paradox pregnant with gorgeous possibilities. Such an approach is capable of producing an experiential insight as satisfying as a good Christmas party. We shall, for the moment, postpone the handling of controversial issues to focus on the attractive human features of the Christmas celebrated among Indian Christians. For instance, the color, fervor and music of the Midnight Mass, the days of expectation filled with putting up decorations, preparing sweets and tasty food, the singing of carols, the re-telling of the story of Christ's birth with shepherds and angels, with royal visitors and a strange star in the heavens. Many families take care to fashion a graphic representation of that story by building a 'crib' in the home. Christians in India are acutely conscious of what Christmas really means: the Lord has taken delight in becoming one of us, a member of the human family with nobody excluded. There is no question of finding ways to 'put Christ back in Christmas', when it is so evident here that his birthday is the whole point of it. Hence it was our joy as children to carry a tray of sweets to our neighbors, Christian and non-Christian alike. As far as I know, this practice is still observed in Christian homes which can afford it. At Christmas the sick in the hospitals and poor are specially remembered - my mother and her friends would spend days preparing hampers for them. These manifestations of human kindness are still reciprocated by Hindus, Muslims and Parsis in their respective festivals, each in their own way. It is the Christmas story that provides the basic inspiration for the vast current network of Christian charitable institutions all over India to serve the rich, dying and needy, the lepers and the prisoners and the downtrodden. It may be good politics to claim that the real motive is conversion, but that is shoddy thinking and poor statistics - because from 1971 to 1991 the census shows that the percentage of Christians in India has actually gone down. What really matters is that all human beings, however poor, dirty or helpless must be accepted as brothers and sisters of the Lord, born into our human family. No person of goodwill can fail to be turned on by the charm of the Christmas story. Numerous Indians rejoice over it. The little child born in a manger because there was no room for him in the inn. The visits of shepherds aware that they knew nothing, but also of the three wise kings aware that they did not know everything - a pattern of devotion repeated down the centuries. The avowed atheist, Jean - Paul Sartre, once wrote in prison a play with the Christmas events reflected through the feelings of Mary, the child's mother: 'He may be God, but he has my eyes'. continue >> Archive