For the first time in my life, I received several messages wishing me a safe Christmas. Not happy. Not merry. Safe. For seven decades, Christmas greetings in my life have come wrapped in warmth, affection, and familiarity. Never before had safety figured in that vocabulary. Christmas was assumed to be benign, joyous, and universally acceptable—even by those who did not believe in its theology. This year, that assumption collapsed.

By the way, I have always preferred “Happy Christmas” to “Merry Christmas”. Merriment is fleeting, often noisy and indulgent; happiness is deeper, quieter, and rooted in contentment, compassion, and peace. Christmas calls for happiness, not merriment. Alas, many Christians see the two words as synonyms.

On the eve of Christmas, a Malayalam news channel interviewed me on Christmas celebrations in North India. I told the correspondent that such celebrations date back to Akbar the Great, who welcomed Jesuit priests at his court in Fatehpur Sikri in 1580, engaging them in theological dialogue and cultural exchange (Abul Fazl, Akbarnama).

I have been celebrating Christmas for the last seventy years or so. Through wars, the Emergency, riots, assassinations, and pandemics—Christmas never felt unsafe. This time, though I personally faced no threat, the atmosphere created by certain groups was deeply unsettling.

I live very close to a non-Christian senior secondary school. Until last year, the school celebrated Christmas with innocent enthusiasm. Children wore red-and-white caps, sang carols taught patiently by their teachers, and played Santa without knowing or caring about theology or politics.

On December 24, the campus would glow. Christmas stars twinkled, buntings fluttered, and publishing houses set up cheerful stalls. From the balcony of our flat, I watched it all unfold year after year, reassured by the ordinariness of coexistence.

This year, there was silence. No carols. No caps. And no decorations. On Christmas Day, the campus lay fog-covered—literally and metaphorically. Fear had done what no government order ever could.

My unease deepened when I read a statement by a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader asking business establishments to stop decorating shops for Christmas because it was “not an indigenous celebration”. By that logic, neither trousers nor neckties should be worn, and no one should drink tea or coffee.

Fortunately for Christians, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on December 25. So the day had to be celebrated—albeit under a different label. Had he been born on December 26, perhaps Christmas itself would have been declared an imported virus. It is a different matter that government employees in several states were deprived of a holiday on Christmas, as at the Lok Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram.

Reports poured in from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha of Hindutva vigilantes storming churches, tearing down decorations, disrupting prayer services, and preventing poor vendors from selling Christmas caps and Santa Claus masks by the roadside.

These were not spontaneous acts of outrage. They were organised, confident, and brazen—performed by........

© National Herald