In nine days we will be singing praises and lighting crackers to welcome the greatest manifestation of God’s love for us with the birth of His Son Jesus, born in a lowly cattle shed. Impatient revellers have already begun to usher in the season of Christmas competing with each other as they set the skies alight with the latest and loudest fireworks currently available.
As the thick smoke swirls like a mist and the overpowering gunpowder of crackers and fireworks fill the air, I escape into my carefully nurtured garden for a breath of fresh air. Filled with flowering oleander, araliya, guava, jambu and jak fruit, it represents a paradise on earth.
As I sit on the garden bench and breathe in their perfume and scents, the heady fragrance of these plants, like a painter’s brush stroke wipes out the present.
I am on a nostalgic journey revisiting over seven decades of my life. These early memories are tightly woven into a tapestry of scents and colours that are undeniably linked to the Christmas season.
The kitchen where my older sister Sunil used to make the Christmas cake is my favourite memory of that by gone era. She would make the cake weeks before the actual dawn of Christmas using real cherries, sultanas, cashew, glaced fruits, preserved ginger, chow chow preserves, mixed peels with liberal doses of brandy, rose water, a whiff of cardamom powder, cinnamon powder, grated nutmeg ,clove powder , honey, golden syrup, marmalade jam and lots of eggs depending on the size of the cake. Most of the ingredients were purchased from the now defunct Millers building in the Fort. After mixing the ingredients well, she would cover them and keep in a cool dark place overnight. It was no ordinary cake. There was so much rich and delicious ingredients that it was bursting with flavour.
A small piece is all that is required for anyone with a sweet tooth Sunil told us, reminding us that it was a cake that needed thought, patience and planning. “That’s why we serve it at a joyful time like Christmas when we want to give our families the best cake we can,” she told us. My siblings and I made it a point to take this Christmas journey with her. Rather than simply watching her work, we helped to pour the mixture into the buttered cake trays and wrap it in wax or oil paper and once again in Christmas wrapping. Once it was returned from the bakery she covered the top of the cake with a layer of almond paste, after kneading castor sugar and icing sugar in a bowl with a dash of melon and ground almonds together to a firm paste.
Choirs
When the mixture was ready for baking we made several trips by car to take the filled trays to Sriyananda Bakery at Vajira Road as the cake weighed over 25 kilos, and could not be fitted into our modest oven at home. It was supposed to feed not just the hungry home folk but dozens of servants, their families, neighbours (that covered almost everyone who lived down Vajira Road) and the choirs who visited us every Christmas to entertain us with their glorious music.
Talking of which at least two special choirs come to my mind. One was the choir from the Deaf and Blind School at Ratmalana. The fact that they sang without a single false note, the sopranos, contraltos and baases blending perfectly was a tribute to their trainer, the remarkable Mrs Spenser Shepherd.
The Salvation Army band led by our uncle Stanley also never failed to give us an impressive display of their talents, on the heavy instruments carried with difficulty in my uncle’s car.
Another vivid memory etched in my mind are the concerts we organised to spread the message of Christmas to our mainly Buddhist neighbours.
Each concert carried a Christmas message cleverly woven into it and were plays written by my mother and father.
The actors were the four of us with a few cousins. We were trained weeks before the event by our parents who also supplied the costumes dug out from our costume basket kept in our attic.
Christmas lunch
This was the highlight of the day. The bulk of the gifts were left under the fresh pine tree branch which my father carried on his shoulders after getting it at half price from the vendor on the 24th night. A few gifts however were laid on the dining table where a sumptuous meal of roast duck, chicken curry, devilled prawns, yellow rice decorated with ribbons of egg halves and coriander leaves, brinjal pahe, dhal curry, papadam and a lot more awaited us. The kitchen staff was invited to share the meal with us. In a separate corner piled high were the gifts we had each contributed to buy for the kitchen staff. Dressed in their best, Nanda in white cloth and beeralu blouse, Somapala in his new sarong, Ayah in her white cloth and long sleeved blouse, they accepted their gifts after singing or reciting a poem or dancing to showcase their individual talents. Ariyawathi who had grown up in our household never failed to compose a new song. This Christmas was not different as she sang her heart out, tears of joy rolling down her cheeks.
Christmas then and now
As I reflect on the more recent memories I recall the thrill of welcoming my first grandchild into the world just five days before Christmas. His birth had a special significance for me as Herschel and I share the same birthday. The difference was that we were born 61years apart. Hearing his first lusty cry we, his grandparents knelt and thanked God for His Christmas gift to us.
Unlike in the past, Christmas has now become increasingly secularized, largely dependent on commercial response to instant demands: instant food, instant car cleans, instant healing, and even instant marriages! In the years gone by, we have never heard of instant noodles, instant prefabricated homes, instant weddings, for then we had all the time in the world. Women rarely worked outside the home and housewives had plenty of home help.
We had never heard of television with multiple channels, for back then in the fifties and sixties, we were quite content to watch the world’s events unfold on the screen of our 14 inch wireless set with only one English channel from the BBC.
Today, as my children and grandchildren invite me to a journey of exploring some of the amazing new technologies that have created a digitalised revolution in our society, - smart phones,iPhones, computers, email, laptops I shake my head in bewilderment.
How, I wonder did we get through life without all these complicated artificial technology .
Then we didn’t need digitalised doctor’s prescriptions since our family doctor never failed to visit our home to examine the patient, writing out the prescription himself in neat handwriting and explaining why the medicine was being given. Then, we didn’t need a CCTV Security camera system to keep out burglars.
We have our own neighbourhood Vigilant Society -volunteers who took turns to do this and warn the others of any suspicious character in the vicinity. So as we celebrate Christmas let’s look at the real meaning of Christ’s birth - behind the tinsel covered trees in shop windows, giant plastic Santa Clauses, glitzy dresses and toys. Let’s find time to strengthen the fast disappearing family bonds in a Christ centred, family oriented, Christmas.