Christmas in Nagaland (I)

A few days ago, a friend back in Australia asked me if it even felt like Christmas over here. It's a fair question, given that I am in India, where the majority of the population are Hindu.

Nagaland is different. Most people in this region refer to the rest of India as 'the mainland', and if you look at a map of modern India, you can see that the whole northeast region looks like India putting an arm around Bangladesh. More importantly, Nagaland is predominantly Christian - Baptist, to be precise. (According to an unsubstantiated claim on Wikipedia, Baptists account for 75% of the state's population, making it even 'more Baptist' than the state of Mississippi. where only 52% are Baptist.)

Since the beginning of December, people all over the state have been busy putting up Christmas lights and Christmas stars (big red stars usually fixed to tall bamboo poles) even though most households don't receive constant power and the added drain from so many lights causes power disruptions / load-shedding times to increase.

To most people, today is the first day marks the first day of Christmas celebrations with shops closing early (earlier than usual) downtown, only opening again on the 26th. And how are people celebrating? By going to church. First there's an evening service today. Tomorrow there'll be a morning service and an evening service. On Christmas Day there'll be another morning and evening service.

But then, comes the eating. One thing that has passed on from traditional pre-Christian life are the big feasts thrown by important members of the community. This usually happens back in people's respective villages and all the villagers are invited to partake in the feast. I'm sure I'll post more on this at some later stage as I've been invited to the Natha New village tomorrow. I was told that two days ago they already slaughtered about five pigs and one (or maybe two) mithun.

Most people here - like many people in the Northern Hemisphere - are tickled by the idea of Australia celebrating Christmas in summer. Ironically, given that it is quite chilly here right now, I don't think it would feel like Christmas to many people here if they were in Australia or Singapore and it was warm and sunny.

Will probably post again after Christmas. Bring on the praying and feasting!