It is early January. You are procrastinating taking down the Christmas lights while side-eyeing gym membership discounts. But for Chennai’s small community of Armenians, the party is just getting started — the Armenians celebrate Christmas on January 6.
Ashkhen Khachatryan, a member of one of Chennai’s only five surviving Armenian families, explains that the community believes that this is the original date. “Around the end of the 3rd Century, the date was shifted to December 25, which is when the festival of worshipping the sun was celebrated, but we continued celebrating it on January 6,” she adds.
The five families gather at the Armenian Church in George Town every year on Christmas Day. Greetings of “Shnorhavor Amanor ev Surb Tsnund’’ (Happy New Year and Merry Christmas) are exchanged. The bells are rung — the six ropes hanging in the belfry (one for each) are pulled and the service begins. “The sermon in Armenia is held at 10 am, and we listen to it online,” says Ashkhen.
“In Armenia, we would light a candle during the evening service on January 5, bring it home and let it burn throughout Christmas day.” However, since the community is so small here, there are no pastors available to perform the service in Chennai. Instead, pastors from Kolkata — home to India’s largest Armenian community — come down to Chennai in November to hold the annual service.
After that, we all go to someone’s house for lunch,” says Ashkhen, who, as a host, loves preparing the tanapur soup with a base of yogurt, peppered with cilantro; the gata, a fluffy pastry filled with a mixture of chopped walnuts; the rice pilaf with dry fruits; and red wine. “We do not eat meat on Christmas,” she says.
The right taste can transport you back to your motherland, but still there are many Armenian traditions lost in this city that will likely never see a snowy Christmas — “As kids we are told that Dzmer Papik (Winter grandpa, as Santa Claus is called) comes to visit children on December 31, with his granddaughter, Dzyunanushik (snow sweetie),” she says. This tradition is re-lived at the Russian Culture Centre, Chennai, which holds a programme for children of the Russian community in the last week of December. She adds, “I want my child to also grow up believing this fairytale.”
– Sweta Akundi
