In our current issue of PaperTigers, Katia Novet Saint-Lot, author of the very special picture-book Amadi’s Snowman, has shared with us her family’s celebration of an expat Christmas, in which she and her family draw in local traditions from the country they are living in at the time. The result is a wonderful evocation of peace and respect across faiths:
Last year, as we built our Nativity scene on the large bottom plank of our Rajasthani bookshelf, a little wooden Ganesh and a small brass Buddha found their way close to the empty spot waiting for Jesus to be born. I don’t remember how they got there, but there they sat, round and happy, amidst all the cotton wool meant to represent the snow. Both my children have grown up surrounded by images of Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles with his broken tusk, his pot belly, and his friend the mouse. They’ve seen his statues carried on auto-rickshaws and trucks all across the city, and they’ve seen them immersed in the lake. Similarly, we have several statues of Buddha in our home. When our little one was 17 months old, we visited Sri Lanka, and she saw so many Buddhas over there that the word became one of her favorites for a while. She would see the statue of a politician, or of any God from the Hindu pantheon, and cry enthusiastically: “Buddha!” So it was only natural that both Ganesh and Buddha should join us in awaiting the birth of Jesus. What is the spirit of Christmas, after all, if not a spirit of universal love? And shouldn’t love go hand in hand with inclusion, tolerance and respect?
When my husband lived in Mali, a predominantly Muslim country , he picked up the habit of saying “Insh’Allah” (God willing) whenever the outcome of a situation was uncertain. When I met him in New York, he was still saying it. He continued to do so while we lived in the predominantly Christian south-eastern part of Nigeria, and our coming to India has not changed his habit. Some people assume he’s Muslim (he was brought up Christian); others know that he’s not, and smile. One day, the Hindu driver who worked for my husband’s office blurted out “Insh’Allah” as the two of them discussed their concern about a particular situation. When my husband laughed, and called him on it, he just smiled.
You can read her whole Personal View, “A Wish for 2010″ here. Our thoughts are with Katia and her family at the moment as her husband is from Haiti. She is currently preparing a post for her blog “about Haiti, its beauty, and what the country and its people mean to me” – I’ll add a link when it goes live; in the meantime, read what she has to say about children’s books about Haiti, as well as Mitali Perkin’s post, which Katia refers to…