Christmas celebrated to honour the glory of the nativity of Jesus
on 25th December is the most significant and spectacular of Christian
festivals. No other celebration is so enriched with so many customs
and ceremonies. There is an array of spectacles like Christmas Star,
Christmas tree, the Crib, Christmas cake, Christmas presents and the
Christmas Father. The last named is quite a fascinating personage,
who claims above all to be the very embodiment of the most vibrant
and quintessence of the gayest of all the festivals. Children allowed
to occupy the central stage, in the enchanted company of Christmas
Father, Christmas takes on the look of a festival of children. The
mood is set with the advent of the season by the twinkling of Christmas
stars and there is no home or shop without the Christmas star, the
beautiful pointer to the Babe of Bethlehem. The Christmas tree is
a new feature in Kerala, perhaps less than sixty or seventy years
old. The crib is a miniature production of the stable where Jesus
was born. It developed from the old practice of giving dramatic expression
to the events and the surroundings of the birth of Christ. Carols
and songs developed from earlier nativity plays have become one of
the most cheerful spectacles of the festivities.Priests hold mass
in churches three times starting with the first at mid-night. Just
before the mid-night mass, an image of the Child is brought by the
priest, preceded by rows of Children holding lighted candles that
are placed in the crib. The hymn 'Gloria in exelcis Deo' is intoned
admidst the explosion of crackers. A sumptous lunch with rate delicacies
is a significant feature of the celebration. Meat forms part of the
feast even in rural homes where meat is rarely eaten. Cake has also
become common in the villages where women have learnt to make it.
In Kerala, X'mas retains its homeliness and expresses itself in the
cultural forms of the country without losing what is native to itself.
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