Do I celebrate Christmas?

Around Christmas time, it’s quite common to hear “Are you almost done with your Christmas shopping?” I heard that a few times as I was being seated at restaurants. I usually answer “Well, my family is traveling at this time. Not much to do.”  That is actually true, since my wife and my 4-year-old traveled to India this past Thanksgiving. As I check into my hotel in Bogota on Christmas day, the guy is curious as to why I am traveling by myself. My answer doesn’t have much variation.

The questions are absolutely harmless, coming from people who just want to do some small talk. But the significance of the holiday season really does not extend beyond the Judeo-Christian world, at least from a religious angle. So there should be no special need to shop for presents or to be with family at this time of the year. But then there is the cultural factor – we tend to mimic the rest of the societal setup. So the questions at least have some assumption – either I am Christian or Jewish, or I simply do what most other people are doing. I have come across sophisticated staff in restaurants I have long frequented who are more direct – “Do you guys celebrate Christmas?”

The problem is there is no good way to answer this. Because I actually do celebrate Christmas - most years that is. Growing up in Calcutta in a fairly multi-religious urban environment, we always used to partake in a celebration that was huge not just due to the vibrant Christian and Anglo-Indian communities, but one that transcended faith – it was an occasion to get out, mingle, or sample cakes from Nahoum’s bakery - a Jewish family run business dating back to the early 1900s.

Over the years I have spent in the United States, I have seen the celebration is too personal and family-oriented; almost everything outdoors shuts down like in a curfew. So I have tweaked my own celebration as well - some family and friends, some baking, some Netflix, a good time overall.

First off, in all likelihood the person asking the question would not be aware of the layered cultural setup I was raised in; he just expects me to be like everyone else around me. The more challenging part is he would probably expect me to celebrate Christmas the same way he would celebrate in his, that is an average Christian household, if I answered yes. May be there’s not much difference – I just don’t know. Of course I could answer ‘Yes – but in my own way’ but that makes the conversation complicated.

To my mind, the question derives from an expectation that a minority subculture should conform to religio-cultural practices of the majority. A religio-cultural practice is different from just cultural like love for NFL, or the English Premier League. But we ourselves, the minorities, feed into this homogenization by celebrating Christmas. But sometimes we don’t celebrate Christmas. And that’s not an aberration in our lives. I have a hard time explaining that.