Christmas in America among South Asians, festive season of christmas celebrated by Indians, NRIs and south asians around the globe from Garamchai.Com

Chicago, November 19, 2006: As it is every year, Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry is having their Christmas Around the World celebration and Holiday Festival of Lights exhibits. The holidays are a special time to explore, share, learn and spend some quality time with our families. As we walked through the trees decorated with different national ornaments representing various nations of the world, the feeling of Christmas being celebrated among different nations and cultures came to light.

With the theme, �Dashing through the Snow,� it is no surprise that this year�s Christmas Around the World celebration pays homage to winter�s most celebrated and chilly companion: snow. With flakes under foot, explore the Museum of Science and Industry�s Grand Tree in the Rotunda. Snow and ice crystals grace the branches with iridescent purple, blue and silver hues.

Christmas Around the World began in 1942 as a United Nations Day salute to American Allies (friends) during World War II. The tribute consisted of one strong symbol � one single Christmas tree. Today, the exhibit rings in the Christmas spirit with more than 50 decorated trees and displays each adorned according to holiday customs from around the world. Community and various cultural groups donate their time to decorate the trees according to their national traditions. Fun fact is, Museum hangs more than 55,000 lights on its trees for Christmas Around the World.

This year the following countries took part in decorating the trees: Armenia, Austria, Bahamas, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hawaii, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Native American, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Republic of Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, USA and Wales.

This year, holiday performances started at the Museum on November 18th and will continue until January 1 - a total of 49 performances from various groups and bands on every Saturday and Sunday. Today Mangalorean Konkan Christian Association had their performance at the Museum. Crystal Rodrigues sang US national anthem at the beginning of the program. MKCA Joint Secretary, Mark Rodrigues welcomed the gathering and Past President Austin Prabhu, emcee the occasion and gave a brief history of Christianity in India. He said that even before Christianity started in Europe, there were Christians in India who were baptized by St. Thomas, apostle of Jesus Christ who came to India to spread Christianity in the year AD 56.

As a part of Indian Dance Performance, Pranita Jain, Artistic Director of Kalapriaya Dance Academy from Chicago had her students perform Bharathanatyam. Krithi explained to the audience that Indian dance started in India about 2,000 years ago and it shows India's rich culture and heritage. Audience from various countries who attended this event were thrilled to see Indian Dance and applauded as their appreciation to the dancers after each dance.

Then we had several performances by the students of Nupur Dance Academy, Naperville headed by Sonia Agarwal. All young kids under 15 years of age danced to the music from Bollywood movies and audience started clapping to the music.

Emcee Austin Prabhu introduced Rev. Dr. Concelia Fernandes, MBBS, MD, DGO, Medical Superintendent of Vijay Marie Hospital, Saifabad, Hyderabad who was the guest in the midst of audience.

MKCA Choir headed by Dorothy Rego sang several Chirstmas Carrols in Konkani and one in Kannada. Daphnie Fernandes accompanied the choir on piano. There was a live crib with five angels, Jossie Mendonca as St. Joseph and Edna Mascarenhas as Mother Mary. MKCA Santa Claus Lig Martis surprised the crowd with his appearance while singing Jingle Bells. The entire Mangalorean cultural program lasted approximately two hours.

Source : Mangalorean Konkan Christian Association - Christmas Around the World - Full Story

conversation with Jyotsna Sreenivasan: What are the ways we can give a sense of family and community to our children when we live in such isolated units? Any suggestions for new traditions for Thanksgiving and Christmas?

"Good question. My husband and I are struggling with this question ourselves. He is Jewish and I am Hindu. We try to expose our children to both cultures and religions, but to tell you the truth, this works best when we get the grandparents involved. When we go to visit my parents, my son does pooja with them twice a day, sings prayers, waves the incense stick, etc. When we go to visit my husband�s parents, my son experiences shabbat, Hanukkah, Jewish food, etc. We also have some very good friends who are Jewish, so we celebrate some holidays with them.

For Indian-American children, our sense of community and culture is very different from the sense that our parents got, living in India. But we still have community and culture. Our culture is one of struggling to balance our parents� culture with the American mainstream culture. Often, we have more in common with other American children of immigrants (no matter what their ethnic background), than we do with people who grew up in India. I see myself as almost a citizen of the world. I am comfortable with people of many different cultures and backgrounds, whereas my parents tend to have trouble making friends with non-South-Asians.

I don�t think we need to adopt another religion�s holidays to help our children fit it. We can maintain our own religious holidays and our own traditions � that�s why America is the land of freedom! For Christmas, I think that if you are not a Christian, why celebrate it? Instead, do something else that is special during that time � take a nice vacation, for example. Last year was the first year my son was aware of Christmas and it was hard for him to understand why we did not celebrate � after all, it�s such a fun, beautiful holiday. But I tried to make a big deal about Hanukkah, so that helped.

On the other hand, Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday so we all, as Americans, should celebrate it. We should embrace and celebrate all non-religious American holidays, and we can add an Indian twist if we like. For Thanksgiving my husband and I make vegetarian food, sometimes Indian food, and we invite our family and friends. My parents took a long time to realize that Thanksgiving was not related to Christianity. When we were growing up, we never celebrated Thanksgiving because my parents saw it as "foreign," as not from our culture. But this just made my brother and me feel even more isolated and adrift.

As Indian-Americans, we must create our own traditions and our own culture. This is not easy, but it is satisfying and fun." - Desi Journal.com