Christmas in Madurai, India

Christmas of 2007 will go down in the family history book as unique and special. As a family we made a conscious decision to celebrate this year with as little of the traditional materialistic fanfare as possible. On Christmas Day there were no stockings, no cinnamon rolls, no tree and no presents from Santa. As much as I love all of those traditions, it was refreshing to wake up and acknowledge the day as most any other day. Instead of focusing on unwrapping unneeded items for hours with obligatory 'ooh' and 'ahh' or 'i've always wanted....' (but not really meaning much of it), we headed off for a day of fun and celebration with some truly amazing kids and volunteers!

Instead of cinnamon rolls and coffee we ate masala dosai, onion othappum and idli at our favorite local restaurant, Meenakshi Bhavan. We took one of the SEED Plan volunteers and her mother out with us to celebrate the Christmas morning! We only found out later that it was the FIRST time her mother had eaten in a restaurant. At the risk of sounding colonial, it was fun to be able to give her an experience she had not had before. It wasn't a fancy restaurant, it wasn't extravagant by any stretch of the imagination, but her life situation has never given her that opportunity to be served. She has always served others.

After breakfast we convened at the SEED center with all the volunteers and other visitors and got into two vans headed for the other two SEED centers in Sambakudi and Thathenary. Each center was decked out in decorations, drawings and the students at each center had dances, songs and speeches prepared to celebrate the day!


Our very small contribution to the festivities was cake for each of the centers. In the US cake is purchased by size, in India you purchase it by weight. So in total, we purchased over 9kgs (20lbs) of cake for the 3 centers! It was ALL happily devoured! We also sang with each of the groups. It wasn't very elaborate, but we also sang some pretty enthusiastic rounds of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas". I didn't know it could be so much fun (or loud)!

After visiting the two outlying centers, we returned to Madurai and went back to Meenakshi Bhavan for meals! All the volunteers and visitors crammed into the restaurant and gorged on rice, sambar, rasam, vegetables, papads, curd and sweets. Again, this was the first time some of these volunteers had eaten a 'South Indian meal' as such!


After lunch we had one more event at the main SEED Center in Karumpalai. Two of the kids were dressed as Ms. & Mr. Claus! They must have been cooking under that outfit, but they didn't seem bothered and played the part for the festivities! At one point they did a dance and gave out presents from their little bags. It was all very very cute!

No function or event at the SEED Centers is complete without lots of singing and dancing!!! It is what they do best! It is always great fun to see their amazing choreography and new cinema dance moves!



It was a very very Merry Christmas!! It wasn't traditional, but it was very memorable--spending time with amazing kids and volunteers, being together as a family, sharing and celebrating with so many people in a different country! And there were no presents to return, no decorations to put away, no tree to dismantle, and no after Christmas sales to bother with!! I think this is the kind of Christmas I'd like to recreate in the future!