(UCA News) — When I celebrated my first Christmas in a remote Maratha tribal village, I learnt that light does not need electricity to shine. An elderly migrant worker named Amma Savitri taught me this when she placed a simple clay lamp in my hands and said, “Father, this is how we welcome Jesus — not with grand things, but with whatever burns in our hearts.”

That moment changed everything I thought I knew about Christmas.

Growing up, I imagined the priesthood would mean celebrating Christmas in magnificent cathedrals with towering Christmas trees and elaborate Nativity scenes. But God had different plans.

As a missionary of the Society of the Divine Word, I found myself serving migrant families in a rural Maratha tribal village, where Christmas arrives not with comfort but with the dust of sugarcane fields and the weariness of seasonal laborers.

Here, the celebration looks nothing like the Christmas cards of my childhood, yet it reveals something profound about the Incarnation that no amount of tinsel ever could.

These migrant families travel hundreds of kilometers each year, following the harvest seasons, living in temporary shelters made of plastic sheets and bamboo. They are modern-day wanderers, much like Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem.

When I first arrived, I asked........

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