merry x-mas

Usually busy little streets in the city center becoming even busier with the Christmas markets with lots of local businessmen selling overpriced goods from small tents .. Beautifully lit streets coming to life, grand Christmas trees with all the wonderful ornaments in most of the busy crossings, little 2 foot stuffed Santa Claus hanging outside the chimneys of houses trying to sneak their way in .. you know what I am talking about .. Christmas. You know it is around the corner without even looking up your calendar. The day of dead calm in the city following these days of storm is the day of Christmas. And sprinkle a little bit of snow in the early hours of the X-mas day and the romantic description of the day reaches its pinnacle with it.

The family aspect of Christmas is great. A nice occasion for reunion with friends and families. I wish all the people met with their folks on this marvelous occasion ..

And then the religious aspect. India, where I come from, is a secular country according to the constitution despite the fact that religions other than Hinduism are in a minority ( do not get me wrong that will still be a few hundreds of millions each for these, which is more than the population of many of the European countries). In my opinion the government of India decided to impose this secularism by removing the restrictions on the loudness of prayers a temple or a church or a mosque can utter. After hearing the prayers of Hindus all year round, it's finally the turn of the Christians to ramp up their amplifiers so that in case you have not reached your salvation by the year end, this is your final chance to take refuge in their faith. The prayers are a bit more modest in the west, confining themselves to a quiet mass inside a church. Walk into a church in the US, and they will ask you all sorts of questions on what your religious background is and whether you have been attending some of the other churches in the town (in US, with a little bit of an exaggeration, almost every street corner has a church which in some sense differs from the other ones in their beliefs .. besides the Catholics, there are the Methodists, Presbyterians, .. and the list goes on). And of course there is the beautiful worship singing. If you attend a church on a Christmas day more out of curiosity, you might want to attend the candle light service on the Christmas eve. It is one of the most beautiful services I have seen in the US. It's a different story that I lost my bicycle when I went in for this service. First I thought it was the work of some needy person, but soon I realized it was the act of Hindu Gods. All the 3 million Hindu Gods, it is an open confession in a blog, I am still loyal to you. I was just curious .. ..

Here in Ticino, the more important the area of the city is the bigger is the Christmas tree. The tallest ones in the city center going up to 40 feet. These are so tall that in the early days of december you can see helicopters, something tells me the military ones, are used to chug these tall trees to the destination. This roughly like the statues of Ganesha during august in India. The statues of cute Ganesha with a big dessert in his hand, can be as tall as 150 feet if you are in the big corner of the city. And then the trouble is in moving out of the place when the festivities are finished. They do not use a helicopter, as the real fun, and the religious meaning grow by moving the statue through in a procession through the streets .. ..

Last but not the least, the gifts. How much to spend, what to buy, where to buy, what might be the best way of achieving the price-satisfaction balance .. all these .. when you are young, the answer is easy. Santa comes all the way from the north pole to drop off your gifts late in the night. My friend tells me that his parents never encouraged the notion of Santa bringing the gifts, as they thought their hard earned money should not be accredited to "some looney who sneaks up the window in a creepy way". But for most kids, Santa is the hero. In the US, as I understand, it is Coca-cola which popularized Santa with his red-white uniform. While here in the Europe, it is Babbo Natale who does the job, some times replaced by Gesu bambino (baby Jesus). The most interesting observation for me is that in Europe babbo natale is literally the Christmas father, while in India and as I gather, even in Russia it is Christmas grandpa. Any way, by noting that this was the most interesting observation I already put my credibility at risk and my wisdom lies in stopping at this point with no more interesting this to note.

"Jesus saves .." as the Bible preaches. That hope, faith makes a lot of people happy during Christmas. For those whose faith still needs to be rooted a little bit more, Jesus definitely saves them from the last week of work in the year. That should be a reason enough to be happy !!!