How Indian American Long Islanders are adopting Christmas traditions

Christmas initially looks typical in these Long Island homes: Families decorate Christmas trees, put cookies and milk out for Santa, and exchange gifts on Christmas morning. But these families are Indian Americans who are Hindu or Sikh and say they celebrate the holiday because they like its message of love, warmth and kindness, even though for them it's not a religious occasion.

“We have a Christmas tree. We light up the house. We have a banner that goes up on the garage door that says 'Merry Christmas.' We have Christmas crockery,” says Taru Rai, 40, a Hindu Realtor from Bethpage who embraces the holiday with her husband, Ritesh, also a Realtor, and their 4-year-old daughter, Ryesha. “We celebrate the spirit. I think that’s what most of the Indian community does.”

Christmas falls after the five-day Hindu holiday of Diwali each autumn. Some Indian immigrant families that have added the American holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving to their fall calendars have also adopted a secular, cultural Christmas, they say. “For me, it’s just a happy time,” says Megha Arora-Sahni, 38, of Plainview, who works in banking and is Hindu. “It’s about bringing a lot of light to our home.”

‘VERY COMMON’

Many of the families also celebrated Christmas growing up in India and continued that tradition after moving here.

“Both my wife and I grew up in Calcutta. We both went to schools run by missionaries,” says Rajiv Rudra, 62, of Syosset, who operates sleep disorder clinics. “From a very young age, our association with Christianity was very strong. We had a tree and exchanged gifts. Celebrating at home was very common. It’s something we just did.”

Observing a holiday that marks the birth of Jesus Christ doesn’t conflict with his Hindu beliefs, Rudra says. “Our religion says every religion is equal,” Rudra says. In addition to Christmas festivities at home, he and his wife, Rica, 59, who works in financial services, attend a Christmas Eve party in Woodbury every year with about 30 Indian families, he says. The party includes holiday caroling and an appearance by Santa at midnight who doles out gifts to the children.

Nina Paul, who works in human resources, and her husband, Minoj, 59, who works in finance, are the hosts of that party. Like Rudra, Nina  grew up attending a missionary school in India and celebrated Christmas with her family there. Now that she's here, she invites friends to the celebration she's been hosting since 2008. "A lot of us, we don't have relatives in this country. These friends are our relatives," she says. "I just absolutely love and adore Christmas. I just love the whole vibe." During the holiday season she lights her tree in the morning and turns it off at night before she goes to bed, she says. 

Lipsy Kohli, 44, who is Sikh and a real esate agent from Levittown and is married to Jasmander Kohli, 45, a software engineer, celebrates with the couple's two sons, Guruansh, 19, and Akaaljyot, 10. “This is the religious holiday. We know that part, but we celebrate in a more secular way," she says.

Guruansh, a sophomore majoring in computer science and business at the University of Rochester, says he plans to continue the tradition with his own family when he has children. “We celebrate less religiously and more as an American cultural thing. Santa Claus is a great motivator for kids. I was really scared as a kid to be on the naughty list,” he says.

FASCINATION, LIGHTS AND FUN

Arora-Sahni started celebrating Christmas when she moved from India to New York, first staying with an aunt in Brooklyn who put up a Christmas tree. “The fascination, the lights, the bling, that was my first introduction,” Arora-Sahni says.

For the past dozen years, she and her husband, Ankur Sahni, 40, a corporate vice president, have been doing “all the fun stuff” that comes with the holiday, she says. “Even when we were dating, we always put a tree up,” she says. They go to Bryant Park’s Christmas market in Manhattan every year and buy another ornament to add to it.

“If some of my American friends wanted to celebrate Diwali and wear a sari and eat Indian food, I think that would be so amazing,” Arora-Sahni says.

This year, with their first child 18 months old, the Sahni family plans to adopt another American Christmas tradition: They’ll wear matching pajamas that say Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear and snap a holiday photo in front of their tree.

By Beth Whitehouse

beth.whitehouse@newsday.comBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.