Some Asian and Arab migrants I knew would try to cook turkey and scatter crackers and silly paper hats around their table. But it was all a bit half-baked and alien.
The staff assumed that every child did or should celebrate Christmas. So they asked the kids about the trees, pressies, Santa Claus sneaking down the chimney. Some of the little ones lied, others cried because they didn’t have any of that. Parents tried to keep the kids happy and also retain their own ethnic and religious identities.
Back then, rigid religious leaders in temples, gurdwaras and mosques warned believers that participating in Christmas rituals would lead us to hell.
Those communal values are still contested but are becoming less virulent.
As the writer Yousra Samir Imran recently wrote in an evocative piece in Hyphen, an online magazine, she and her husband, both British Muslims, “are navigating Christmas with our young child for the first time. Ammar, who is now three, has started singing along to festive songs like ‘Jingle Bells’…
Sikh and Hindu purists also try to stop their flocks joining in the spirituality and fun. They must know it’s a lost cause.
Stop poking your head into my baby’s pram without asking
Read MoreThis Christmas, the turkey and potatoes cooked by many of my kith and kin will be spiced and stuffed with saffron rice; fruit cakes will contain clove powder, pistachios and date molasses; sprouts will be lifted with turmeric and cumin (recipe below), and cheap and cheery gifts will be exchanged. Happy times.
From being a marker of old Britishness, Christmas, for us, became a meaningful signifier of Christian kindness and generosity as well as colourful, diverse modernity.
Loveable Sprouts
Split and parboil 500g of sprouts. Then shallow fry them in olive oil with salt, a tsp of turmeric and half a tsp of ground cumin. Finally throw in three beaten eggs.
The recipe – invented by my mum – redeems the much unloved veg, and redemption, as we know, is a central pillar of Christianity.
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