Snuggling inside my blanket this festive season, my eyes latched on to a short YouTube vlog on a delightfully colorful winter festival of the Kalash people of the high Hindu Kush mountains in Pakistan.
Nestled in the remote and lonely meadows of Chitral, 4000 feet above mean sea level, the Kalash, barely 4,000 in number and dwindling, usher in the Chitermas or Chaumos this time of the year, celebrating the fall harvest before deep winter descends on their homes.
The Kalash, an archaic 'Aryan' tribe, practice rudimentary Vedik rituals lost in time, and to the rest of us, 'Hindus'. Yet, their principal divinities belong to our pantheon: Mahandeo (our Mahadev: for crops, as in Sanskrit Hara, and war, as in Shiva), Indr (our Indra: thunder, rainbow), Balumain (perhaps, our Balaram: winter/fertility hero), Jestak (possibly, our Jyestha: for domestic life, family), Krumai (our Kumari: mountain goddess). They also worship spirits such as mountain fairies, Suchi for purity (also in Sanskrit), soil spirit Jach (our Yaksha or Jakkha), and ancestors (Sanskrit: Pitru).
Kalash, in Sanskrit, means the Vedik cosmic pot, a mainstay in our everyday rituals, that is celebrated as Kumbh, the festival of the eternal pitcher of Time anticipating the bounty of Spring.
The Vedik calendar, as we know it, rotates in a 12 month (barahmah) cycle, in a loop of 12 years that make the Kumbh, that celebrates a granary full for giving. For 'Hindus,' Chaturmah (Sanskrit: Chaturmasya), cognate with Chitermas - Chaumos, is a four-month annual break for rest, recuperation and revival, with the year divided into three broad seasons or ritu, of four months each, of which two months are of milder intensity, and two months severe, adding up to six seasons or ritu all year round.
For centuries, Hindus, Buddhists and Jains of mainland India have observed the Chaturmah during the monsoon season, July through October, when rains flood the vast northern plains and the narrow coastal strips of the South, through Varsha and Sharad ritu. Historically, this was when the merchants' caravans stalled, the warriors ceased their battles, and both mendicants and scholars retreated to their Saraswati bhandar and Baudh vihar for academic pursuits and meditation on the mysteries of nature. And poets wrote beautiful poetry, revelling in the romance of the monsoon clouds.
With the Kalash of Chitral, Chitermas heralds the four month break of peak winter in the snowbound Himawat-Himalaya ranges, a break for retreat and rejuvenation, that the Vedik calendar divides into two winter subset seasons of Hemant and Shishir.
The Kalash have no scriptural inheritance or use of calendar to keep time, unlike the Vedik records of the Indus-Saraswari-Ganga valleys where our scriptures proliferated through the ages. They rely on memory and oral traditions of their inherited past, instead, as with our shruti and smriti, to keep their spiritualism alive. Tribal elders read the trees, and meadows, the flow of the wind, the sunsets and dawns, and in between them, the stars of the night sky above, to celebrate the onset of Chaumos during a two-week window culminating in the long night of winter solstice. They call this festival Chitermas.
I would have gone to bed tonight, in comfort, to rise to the joy of Christmas had not Chitermas rattled my mind through the countdown to 'Eve'. Was I missing something in time to celebrate the Coming of Christ?
Long before Christmas came to be known as Christmas, the Nestorians are known to have wandered across much of the Trans-Himalayan corridor in the footsteps of the Three Wise Men of the East. And to spread the good word around. Was it possible that they took the message of the Solstice's Happy Tidings, a little over a millennium ago, in time for Christmas?
Christmas was not Christmas in Christendom till the British called it so, sometime around the start of the second millennium CE, a full one thousand years after Christ.
Christmas was first documented as the term Cristes mæsse (or variants like Crīstesmæsse, meaning "Christ's mass", as Christ's birth), in 1038 CE in an obscure Anglo-Saxon chronicle. My searchings tell me that this is the earliest recorded vernacular European name equivalent to "Christ's mass," emphasing the central liturgical Mass on 25 December. A slightly later attestation, Cristes-messe, appears in 1131 CE.
This was exactly the time when the Nestorians were active in the Steppes, carrying back and forth eastern and western mysticim and spiritual practices, among others, the Jain fasting ritual of Santhara, inviting death, for the soul's redemption. To distant Kiev in the heart of ancient Russia, and onward.
Christendom's earliest documented records, such as the Chronograph of 354 in 336 CE, refers to the December 25 celebration as 'natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae' (Latin for 'Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea'). It was neither called a 'feast' nor given a specific name, other than marking Christ's date of birth.
The celebration developed into a celebratory liturgical feast in the 4th–6th centuries, and was most commonly known as the Feast of the Nativity (Latin: Festum Nativitatis, or Festum Nativitatis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi—"Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ").
This name emphasised the birth (nativitas) of Christ and spread across the Christian world, reaching Egypt by 432 CE and England by the late 6th century. So says Grok.
The English, who belonged to the Celtic spiritual lineage of seasons, harvests, the Druids and the Stonehenge, made Christmas a universal celebration of hope, peace and joy that we came to observe under the evergreen conifer, before the Americans brought Santa home.
The Europeans still celebrate the ecstasy of The Birth as Noël in France, Navidad in Spain, Natalie in Italy, and Natal in Portugal, all derived from Latin Natalis, for the Nativity. The Greeks observe Christoúgenna.
The Germans celebrate Christmas as Weihnachten (holy night, referring to the sacred vigil).
The Nords celebrate Jul for Christmas, from Old Norse jól, a pre-Christian midwinter festival, that means the cycle of time, and sounds deceptively similar to the old Sanskrit, Indo-Iranian, jhul (Hindi: jhula) that too is symbolic of the pendular swing of time. The English call it Yule.
Whatever its primitive past, the Joy of Chitermas is a celebration of Universal Light for all humanity to rejoice at the end darkness. And what better way to commemorate the birth of the Saviour than the hope of love and light he brings to mankind this time of the year. Every year.
It's Christmas!
ps: In my search for meaning, I could hardly trace references to scatterd scholarly dissertations on the Kalash of Chitral, till I came upon what looks like a fascinating work on the festivity and joy around Chitermas.
PAGAN CHRISTMAS by Augusto S Cacopardo should reach me in time for New Year. Inshallah!
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