Sweet Memories of Christmas from the heart of a Hindu who loves the joyful spirit of Christmas .

by Retd. Prof. (Mr.) Durgesh Kumar Srivastava
(New Delhi, India)

I was born and brought up in a traditional Hindu family at Allahabad in north central India. We lived in the Daraganj locality of the city, near the confluence of two great rivers - the Ganga and the Yamuna.

There were no Christian families in Daraganj and I was not aware of the festival of Christmas in my early childhood. My father was a lawyer and I remember going with him to the High Court once in a while. There was a majestic old building built in the center of a road round-about on the way to the High Court building. My father told me that it was the main Church of Allahabad. I did not understand much of what he told me.

When I began going to school (I was home educated and began going to school only from Standard IV), our Physical Education teacher, a tall handsome man, who was always well dressed and cheerful, announced one day that the school would be closed on the following day. Why? We asked. Because it was "BADAA DIN". Then he explained that Badaa Din meant Christmas. Badaa Din is a Hindi word which translates as "The Big Day".

Our P.T teacher then distributed "Lebinchuse" (lemon candies) among the children. In those days, Lebinchuse was a popular sugar candy in Daraganj and came in two flavours - lemon and orange. I asked him for extra Lebinchuse for my younger brother and he readily obliged. Then he dismissed the class and said that we could play as we chose. We were very happy. Our teacher had won our hearts.

Nearly 60 years have elapsed but I can still visualize our tall and handsome P.T. teacher taking out Lebinchuse from the pockets of his Khaki full pant and distributing these happily among us and bringing Christmas cheer to our young hearts.

I grew up, did my post-graduation from the University of Allahabad and proceeded to join my first teaching job in Dhanmanjari College, Imphal, in the far-eastern Indian state of Manipur.

For the first time in my life, I came across Christmas celebrations on a large scale. There were a big number of Christians among my students and colleagues in my college.

For the first time in my life, I got an opportunity to taste the delicious Christmas cakes offered by students and colleagues. Also, for the first time in my life, I decorated my single room residence (I was a bachelor then) with colourful Christmas decorations - buntings and flowers made of shiny paper. I had not yet visited a Church, although I wanted to go inside and see it.

I got my first opportunity to visit a Church and see it from inside in the following year when I was sent on General Elections duty in the Hilly areas of Manipur. These hills are dotted with picturesque little villages. People live in small village huts. Every village has a Church, usually in the center of the village. Our party of election staff stopped at most villages on the way, usually near the Church. Some villages had a small Church, usually a one room structure. But the bigger villages had much larger Churches often with a compound.

Whether small or big, the Churches always presented a neat and elegant picture with typical folk tapestries on the walls and locally woven carpets on the floor. Lighted candles created a magical effect.

I changed my job and shifted to Bilaspur in Central India as a college lecturer. Two of my colleagues lived as tenants in the house of the pastor in a nearby hamlet. I became a regular visitor to the Pastor's house. He invited me to a pre-Christmas function in the local school.

Once at the function, he surprised me by inviting me to address the students. I was not prepared. I knew very little about Christmas. Speaking in Hindi to the small audience of students and parents I narrated a story that I had read somewhere. It was like this:


A play was being staged in a small school on the eve of Christmas. It was based on the story of the day when Jesus was born. Small boys and girls from the school were playing the various characters in the play. A small boy was playing the character of the keeper of the village inn.

It was a cold night when a man of advanced age, accompanied by a young girl approached the village and knocked at the inn's door repeatedly.

The inn keeper opens the door and asks them - what do you want. They reply that they want a place to spend the night. The inn-keeper says "There is no space here" and prepares to close the door.

Till this point, the play had gone according to the pre-written script. But the small boy, playing the inn-keeper makes a surprise change in the pre-written script by re-opening the door and shouting back to the departing visitors - Oh, the night is cold. Where will you go ! Come in here. You can stay in the inn and use my room for the night.

The audience watching the play began weeping and sobbing at the kindness of the innocent boy who played the inn-keeper and had deviated from the pre-written script.

I have tears in my eyes right now as I write this story after so many years.

That school function in Bilaspur was held sometimes around the mid-1960s. Subsequently, I got married, moved to New Delhi in my new job as a Lecturer in Commerce in a Delhi University College. I am now 67+.

I end this article by recounting the last of my Christmas stories. This happened in 1992.

I was invited to attend a Three-day Conference on the Problems of the Elderly at Mumbai. I was myself not yet 50 years in age then but was invited because I had submitted an article in Hindi on the theme "Jeewan ki Sandhya Mein Bhavnatmak Anand" (Emotional Joy in the Evening of Life). My article had been accepted.

We were housed four to a room at the conference venue. Two of my room mates were a Christian couple who had come from a far away coastal village in Andhra Pradesh on the eastern sea coast of India. They were simple people, both husband and wife were school teachers.

As the call came for lunch we gathered in the dining hall and saw the inviting food spread on the tables. There was an array of food items on offer. We could have as much as we wanted of anything that we wanted to eat.

As I began to eat I chanced to look at the plates of my two room mates. They only had plain boiled rice and Dal (a soup made with pulses). Just nothing else. I asked them what was the matter with them. Are you unwell or something? What they told me filled my heart with respect for them.

They said that they came from a village where poor fishermen lived. The fishermen worked for a fishing contractor and only had coarse rice and third-grade fish to eat. So, this teacher couple had been observing a simple practice of eating every Friday, the simple poor-man's food of the village fishermen and donating for charity the money they saved thus.

This Friday they were conference guests and could eat as much as they liked of choicest food. But they had stuck to their routine of simple Friday lunch that they had been following for many years. I bowed in my heart for the loving simplicity of their noble hearts.

Let us all follow their examples. Can we? Will we?

Retd. Prof. (Mr.) Durgesh Kumar Srivastava,
New Delhi, India, 29th Nov., 2010 JiBhaiya@gmail.com