© Shutterstock
Culture & Living
From Goan Catholics to East Indians and the Naga Christians, here's your lowdown on how diverse groups across the country bring in the year-end festival
Christmas in India is a beautiful affair. Sure, Santa Claus’s sleigh may get stuck in the palm fronds of Goa, and many of the states are far too warm to be sipping hot chocolate by the fire, but an Indian Christmas is as rich and diverse as the communities that celebrate it. Here’s what Christmas is like in a few of the Christian households around the country.
“Christmas is a mood”, says Aaron Lobo, a marine conservation scientist based in Goa. The Goan-Catholic Christmas table, unsurprisingly, features several dishes that are a nod to the community’s Indo-Portuguese roots. One of these makes an appearance at Christmas lunch in Aaron’s family home every year—Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá. Made from salt cod that is soaked for at least 24-48 hours, this casserole also features potatoes, onions, olives, and boiled eggs and is both rich in texture and flavour.
© Shutterstock
A sumptuous, meat- and seafood-laden meal, Christmas cooking is a global affair according to Aaron—not just in the inspiration for the dishes, but quite often the foods themselves. “The Goan diaspora is scattered all around the world. This is one time that everyone comes down,” he says. Several families, like Aaron’s, source the salt cod or Bacalhau from Portugal where it is a much-beloved ingredient. Affluent families will also have platters of Spanish and Portuguese cured meats and sausages like jamón, morcela (blood sausages) and chorizo picante adorning their festive table. In the days when olive oil was still a novelty in India, the characteristic green tins of Figaro could be found on Christmas tables in Goa.
A Goan-Catholic meal is incomplete without seafood and Christmas is no different. Fish Mayonnaise Salad is made from deboned king fish that is cooked and flavoured with onions, potatoes, herbs and mayonnaise, and then lovingly moulded back into the shape of a fish.
In Rhea Aaron’s family, Christmas dinner is a much-anticipated occasion, which brings together friends and family from near and far. The dinner often feeds upto 150 people and is a meat-lover’s dream come true. There’s pork chops with coconut vinegar, a fiery flame-roasted chicken, roast pork and salt-cured beef. For 20 years, Rhea’s father made the family Christmas cake, but this year, the baton has been passed on to Rhea, who runs a business selling many of these dishes from her home kitchen.
As far as cakes go, bolo san rival or ‘cake with no rival,’ as it is aptly named, is the ultimate indulgence. Elaborate and luxurious, this French dessert that found its way to Goa through the Portuguese is slowly falling out of favour. While the French version uses almonds, in Goa, the cake is made with cashew, and layers of meringue sandwiched by fluffy buttercream.
Astrid Rodrigues, who has been hosting Christmas lunch in her home for 33 years now, starts prepping for the special day in early November. There’s duck and suckling pig to be ordered. The Christmas pudding gets an even earlier start and is meticulously made in October. For Astrid, who used to cater from her home for many years, planning and anticipation that comes with it is part of the joy of Christmas—Astrid remembers a time when as a little girl living in Mahim, Mumbai, her grandmother would hatch turkey eggs in August for it to be ready for the Christmas Day roast. These days, while growing her own poultry is not feasible, she takes pains in finding the perfect duck for her Duck Moile. This Portuguese-influenced dish is an East Indian speciality that uses the most well-known East Indian ingredient, bottle masala. A heady mix of anywhere between 20-36 spices, it gives many of the East Indian dishes their characteristic flavour, including Duck Moile.
In Simona Terron’s family, the roast dish is usually beef or pork, cooked low and slow. The leftovers from the roast also make for a tasty accompaniment for the drinking that inevitably takes place later in the evening. Simona, who is a journalist and podcast host, says that her favourite Christmas Day dish is chicken cooked in khuddi masala, a fragrant, subdued khaki-green dish where the garam masala is painstakingly roasted until the flavours mellow and deepen. While some cooks, like Astrid’s mother, liked to make fugiyas for Christmas (described by Simona as fried bubbles), these fermented deep-fried deliciousness are usually reserved for Church feasts. Instead, chittaps or chittiaps are favoured on Christmas Day. The light and delicate rice flour crepes work perfectly with most dishes on the table.
Christmas is also when the homemade wines that have been patiently waiting to be unveiled are brought out. A wide variety of fruit are used to make these wines, like pineapple, mulberry, pear and of course, grape. The fruity sweetness of the wine belies its potency and a few glasses go a long way.
For cookbook author Lathika George, who belongs to the Syrian Christian community of Kerala— the oldest Christian community in India—the weeks leading up to Christmas is a time for communal cooking. Making and sharing palaharams or snacks is an important tradition in the community, as it is to several others. The popular ones, according to Lathika, are acchappam or rose cookies, cheeda or kulkul, and kozhalappam. “I have my neighbours over a few weeks before Christmas for an evening of cookie decorating and kulkul making. There's mulled wine and a large cheese platter to sustain us as we work, and later, carol singing,” she says.
© Shutterstock
When it comes to one meal that represents a Syrian Christian Christmas, Rachel Kurian believes it is the Christmas Day breakfast of appam and ishtew, and Lathika agrees. “If you follow any Syrian Christian on Instagram, come Christmas, they will be talking about appam and ishtew!” laughs Rachel. Inspite of hosting a large elaborate meat-centric feast the night before, Rachel’s family wakes up early to open presents and eat warm, crisp appams with either a mutton or chicken ishtew and egg roast, a satisfying rendition of eggs with tangles of softened onion—perfect for scooping up with a piece of appam. Although Rachel, a home chef based in Bengaluru, makes appam batter several times a week for work, she tries not to eat it too often because she wants it to still feel special on Christmas morning.
Other than a breakfast of appam and stew, there is a broad canon of dishes that families might turn to at Christmas time. Roast duck, if you live by the backwaters, roast pork, stuffed chicken, beef ularthiyathu—that poster child of Syrian Christian cuisine—and even biryani in some cases.
Nagaland is a predominantly Christian state with over 90 per cent of the population identifying as Christian. To Dolly Kikon, an anthropologist and scholar who grew up in Dimapur, the fireplace is central to Christmas in Nagaland. “The winters are so cold that in order to keep warm, you must be close to the fireplace.” The elders and youngsters alike sit around the fire, roasting potatoes and making sticky rice cakes.
A communal affair, socialising begins weeks in advance as various church committees meet up to discuss their respective responsibilities over cake and tea. Although Christmas cake is easily available these days, Dolly remembers the days when only two bakeries in Dimapur would make this prized cake—Plaza Bakery and Breeze. “When I was a child, our Christmas gifts to our aunts and cousins in the villages would be Christmas cakes from Plaza or Breeze. The cakes were so precious.”
© Shutterstock
On the 25th, lunch is served outside the church after the Christmas service. Members of the congregation sit together in a long line, chatting and relishing the food on offer. Chef Joel Basumatari, who has previously owned a restaurant in Dimapur and is a fervent advocate for Naga food, says that pork cooked with fermented bamboo shoots served at the church feast captures the essence of Christmas for him. The other dishes on offer are rice, dal, boiled vegetables including various squashes, mustard leaves, and fruit. To Dolly, although the food is, for the most part, what is served in Naga homes on an everyday basis, there is something exceptional about eating it together as a community. It might be the same dish they ate the night before but it will still taste amazing at the Church feast. “Someone might say ‘Oh it’s that lady with the amazing hands who can make that most amazing chutney!’ and everyone will nod their head in agreement.” It comes down to the power of storytelling and food, thinks Dolly.
While festivals in general are a time when the disparity between the haves and the have-nots is most apparent, taking the Christmas Day feast out of people’s homes and having it at church instead, is an an equaliser—for that one meal, the wealthier and the poorer families partake in the same meal. As Dolly points out, celebrations bring people together to see food not just as food, but as a way of reflecting on our shared humanity. “It is important to look at a celebration not as an end in itself, but as as a means for reflection and working towards a future that is inclusive.”
Aysha Tanya is a writer and the co-founder of Goya, a digital food and culture publication
Where to go for the best Christmas feasts in your city
Vogue's Christmas 2020 gift guide: 26 ideas for the food-lover in your life