By: Divya Aslesha Published in:* Scroll* Date: December 25, 2025 Source: https://scroll.in/article/1089537/a-balmy-christmas-indians-have-made-the-festival-and-faith-their-own Beyond the snow, tinsel and the dominant aesthetics of the European-American Christmas is a world of varied, unique celebrations.
For the past 43 Christmases, a tapestry has hung in my mother’s home. Lately, it has come to represent a contradiction. A gift from Ethiopia by dear friends of my grandparents, the tapestry depicts Mary cradling baby Jesus, both encircled by golden halos: it is renaissance-style imagery with both figures pale-skinned while Christ has bouncing, golden curls and bright, blue eyes. Ethiopia was among the earliest regions to adopt Christianity <https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/african-christianity-in-ethiopia>, around the fourth century, according to historians. I am not an art scholar, but unlike our tapestry, religious illustrations and artwork from Ethiopia between the 14th century to the late 18th century are distinct, featuring figures with brown skin, black hair and eyes and beards. Startlingly, they look Middle Eastern <https://pemm.princeton.edu/en-us/paintings/by-story/7010>. With Israel’s assault on Gaza stretching into its third Christmas, the idea that Christ was a Palestinian <https://theconversation.com/was-jesus-palestinian-243943> has resurfaced at protests and rallies as Christians in Gaza <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/21/middleeast/catholic-patriarch-gaza-church-christmas-mass-intl> and the Palestinian territories in the West Bank <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce86z84e947o> mark the festival. Historians and scholars of religious studies say there is not enough evidence to state precisely where Christ was born <https://theconversation.com/was-jesus-really-born-in-bethlehem-why-the-gospels-disagree-over-the-circumstances-of-christs-birth-150828> and that Palestine, despite its long history, had undefined and shifting boundaries. However, it is agreed that Christ was born in West Asia and was certainly not white <https://www.livinglutheran.org/voices-of-faith/jesus-was-a-palestinian-jew-not-white/> . Non-white representations of Christ and Christianity are widespread even though churches, certainly in India, abide by idealised European-style imagery. There is a wealth of art and iconography <https://scroll.in/article/697185/astonishing-christmas-themed-mughal-miniatures-from-the-courts-of-akbar-and-jehangir>, fromMughal art <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rn7eljy12o> and Ethiopian manuscripts <https://pemm.princeton.edu/en-us/paintings/by-story/7010> to “Black Jesus” and the work of Indian artists, of varying depictions of Christianity. The Ethiopian tapestry, with its marble-skinned iconography, instead reinforces what faith and divinity must look like. Tradition maintains that Christianity arrived in the Indian subcontinent as early as 52 CE, but it is also intertwined with the European colonisation of India. For Indian Christians, this can be a double bind: Hindutva supporters claim that they are not sufficiently Indian while some in the West believe that they are not appropriately Christian. But this ambivalence is also a flexible space of being, unique to one’s life and location. Indeed, the book *Indian Christmas* is a heartfelt archive of how India’s many Christians have made the festival their own through food, ritual and faith. Last December, *Scroll*’s Nolina Minj wrote about how Adivasi Christians celebrate Christmas in Jharkhand <https://scroll.in/article/1077173/a-jharkhand-christmas-sadri-carols-to-the-beat-of-the-mandar-sugar-dusted-arsa-family-picnics> with Kurukh carols, traditional food and Adivasi figures in the nativity scene. These contradict the accusations that arise every Christmas of the faith being an obscene Western import. Christianity’s violent colonial legacy is a historical reality, but Christianity has also been rooted in and transformed by the lives and cultures of those who went on to follow it. Faith, after all, is given meaning by those who practise it and perhaps find in it whatever it is they seek. The blog *Indigenous Jesus* <https://indigenousjesus.blogspot.com/> collects iconography and artwork showing how the faith has been reimagined across the world, by Indigenous Americans <https://firstnationsversion.com/book/birth-of-the-chosen-one/> and Australians, Nigerians and several Indian artists. *Scroll* has extensively covered the work of some of these artists, such as FN Souza and especially Angelo da Fonseca <https://scroll.in/magazine/1035631/at-the-museum-of-christian-art-in-goa-glimpses-of-indias-artistic-syncretism>, whose art inhabits the contradictions of Christian identity. They were both born in Portuguese-ruled Goa, which was later integrated into India. Fonseca’s evocative Christian iconography is a bridge between these two worlds. In one nativity painting, Fonseca’s Mary, wearing a saree and mangalsutra, holds an infant, faintly emitting rays of light while Joseph stands behind her, his hands folded in prayer. Like Fonseca, Indian artist Alfred Thomas’s *Life of Christ,* a collection of his paintings first published in 1948, depicts a Buddha-like Christ. The introduction to the book says that Thomas “places our Lord and His followers in Indian settings. He employs Indian symbolism, interpreting it in the light of Christian faith”. Yet, the writer of the introduction, presumably George, the Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan, is perhaps unsettled. He writes that Thomas’s depiction of transfiguration, the moment when Christ undergoes divine transformation on a mountaintop, “is the most difficult picture”. Contrary to the depictions of Christ exuding radiant power, Thomas’s Christ closely resembles Buddha and is also clearly dark-skinned. “The joy of perfect colouring and design is marred at first sight for us by the blue of Christ’s glorified Body,” writes the bishop. “But that which to us is so strange is immediately understandable to Indian eyes.” But it was Fonseca’s iconography that sparked the most outrage, drawing the censure and criticism of the church as well as Indian Christians, forcing the artist to leave Goa. Jesuit priest Delio Mendonca writes in *Fonseca* <https://www.angelofonseca.com/index.html> that the artist’s difficulties “started with his own family, then extended to his entire community including church authorities of his day as well as the art world of India”. Mendonca quotes FN Souza as saying that the clergy continued to impress upon Christians “the art to be admired was the Christ with the golden hair and blue eyes and flaxen-haired Madonnas, the Italy-made holiness”. As Mendonca powerfully notes, Fonseca “was to remain paradoxically too Hindu for Catholics and too Catholic for the Hindus, too Indian for the West and too Western for the Indians”. Over the years, Mendonca writes, the church in the 20th century began reconsidering its position on indigenised iconography, keen to disassociate itself from the cruelties of colonial conquest as independence movements gathered steam across the colonies. The acceptance of iconography, like Fonseca’s, was recast as part of the church’s advocacy of Christian universalism. Today, when December feels lost beneath a heap of tinsel and terrible Christmas movies – almost always set against snowfall and flowing coats – the priest’s annual lament that “Christmas is not about Santa, gifts and cake” rings true. But cotton snow, wreaths and candy canes jostle for room alongside Indian influences such as the exuberant, skinny Santa Clauses who dance to drumbeats as they accompany carolers in Kerala, Christmas “faral” and the like. Snow is hardly a prerequisite for the festival and like in balmy Kerala or Mumbai, not everyone is dreaming of a *White Christmas.* Beyond the dominant aesthetic sensibilities of a European-American Christmas is a world of varying, unique celebrations. The widespread festive embrace of this time of year, though Christ wasn’t even born in December – and what we are all celebrating is actually the Winter Solstice – is a brief but heartening moment. Perhaps, in another time, my grandparents’ tapestry could have told a different story. But for now it is a reminder to seek out the more varying threads of faith that make for a more colourful tapestry.
