The meaning of Christmas - for me
This morning I read a post in Yahoo! news. People in a neighborhood in Michigan were sent anonymous letters telling them that the Christmas lights that they had put up were "pagan" in origin and therefore, they should be taken down. A lot of comments appeared under that post ranging from good, bad and ugly. I wanted to post a comment myself and then I realized that what I had wanted to say would not suffice in a solitary reply. So here goes.. I grew up in a Christian family in a completely Hindu neighborhood. For all our lives I felt I did not fit in with all the traditions of the Pujas and Diwali and Holi (which was always during Lent, so we never were allowed to participate). However, I still remember waking up on a chill fall morning, listening to the Mahalaya program on the radio, while curled up under cozy blankets. I still remember bursting firecrackers on Diwali, and the luchi/meat kossa dinner we always had that night. I still remember the loud blari