Department stores in Thailand put up Christmas trees, snowmen, advertise Christmas specials. In November, 800+ school children formed a record-breaking human Christmas tree at a mall in Bangkok. In India, you can buy Christmas meals at restaurants, carolers sing in the malls, and cities are decorated for the holidays. Indians dress like Saturday Evening Post Santas.
Thailand is 94% Buddhist and 5% Muslim, and only about 2% of Indians are Christian.
Christmas is big stuff all over Asia, with one thing missing: the birth of Jesus . “Christmas in India, and Asia in general, has undergone something of a transformation in recent decades, with countries around the region embracing the gift-buying, food, decorations, and singingpretty much everything but the religious commemoration of the birth of Christ.”
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Lift My Chin, Lord
Lift my chin, Lord,Say to me,“You are not whoYou feared to be,Not Hecate, quite,With howling sound,Torch held…
Letters
Two delightful essays in the March issue, by Nikolas Prassas (“Large Language Poetry,” March 2025) and Gary…
Spring Twilight After Penance
Let’s say you’ve just comeFrom confession. Late sunPours through the budding treesThat mark the brown creek washing Itself…
