Santa in the Sun!

Now I miss snow. Not really, but like you miss a tooth that ached, the tooth you would caress with your tongue just to feel the pain. I miss it like that tooth.
I read reports of a giant Noreaster blowing through the entire Northeast, and couldn’t get enough of the pictures. I wanted more – more pictures of snowblowers, of trees covered in icicles and people that shovel snow.
Even YouTube videos like this one -- totally cool! I miss Boston :(

All the while (sort of) aware and thankful that I’m not among those people. But I wish I were there, where the weather dominates conversations, where the number of inches of snow in your neighborhood is directly proportional to your bragging rights. “We have 12 inches near my house,” clearly trumps “I had nearly seven inches of snow in our area,” especially if you live in an apartment.
Public transport woes can never match the horrors and hazards of driving through the snow, especially if you drive through back roads.
I think what brought this whole thing about was the whole Christmas spirit thing here.
I thought I’d miss Christmas here, but I guess not. The office is full of it – more so than my office in Boston!
I guess the difference is that in Boston, it was more personal, and not as much a community thing. But desis, being desis, like being a community in everything!
There’s actually quite a few specialty Christmas shops set up. I saw a couple just on my regular rounds. That’s quite impressive.
I’ve always thought it must be weird for Christian kids living here – I’m sure they’ve never really believed in Santa Claus, and even if they did, how would they imagine him?
If they haven’t seen snow, how can they really enjoy the spirit of Santa “dashing through the snow”? Doesn’t everything make more sense in context?
Like the Independence Day celebrations in Boston, like the Diwali celebrations without crackers (NOT the biscuit kind) in Hartford, many of our rituals, traditions and festivals lose relevance when placed outside their own context, in space and time. How can we ensure that
a. we make them meaningful, and
b. we make them relevant to the time and place we belong to?

Clearly, Santa wasn’t part of the celebrations in Jerusalem. When the West created its own Santa, why can we not create our own Banta to make it more fun for kids?
New Zealand has done just that, with this "folk song," about Santa and a barbeque!
Or maybe this Santa on the beach needs to be made our regular mascot here in Chennai.

Every religion needs to adapt to make more sense to people who follow it.
It needs to, as one of our departments in the office is called, do some serious localization! Whether it’s software, or learning materials, or training manuals, the big buzzword here is that everything needs to make sense in a global context. So, never use local slang, or culture-specific idioms.
On the other end of the spectrum, some things need to be so personalized that we need to give them a local twist.
When Kamal Hassan was “inspired” by Mrs. Doubtfire, he had to bring in elements of Indianness that wouldn’t have made sense in the original.
Ayyanaar is such an example, where religion took the concept of venerating brave heroes, and turned them into a God that made sense locally, while retaining ties to the larger Hindu pantheon.
Of course, it is more difficult to achieve such a degree of localization in a monotheistic religion, but perhaps little things make a big difference?
A post on the Internet says, “I hated to see pics of a white Jesus when in india on homes of dark skinned people. It was offensive to me as a light skinned person that they did not see Jesus as one of their own.” Debates rage, especially around this season, as to whether the traditional representation of Jesus as white, with blue eyes, makes any sense considering he was from the Middle East.
We need to bring in an Ayyanaar (a primarily Tamil God venerated in villages, for his heroism) for things that we want to adapt, but don’t have a context. And not just in religion. In every sphere of our lives. If we want to be more Western, it may make more sense to create our own brand of rock, like Junoon did, rather than follow Linkin’ Park. After all, “teen spirit” isn’t quite the same here, is it?
So, this season, when kids scramble to sit on the laps of black Santas and white and brown, let’s figure out a way to make our own traditions that actually make sense to us.