Wednesday 25th December

Christmas Day!

Christmas Walthukul! Christmas Greetings! We got up at three o'clock this morning after three / four hours sleep and dragged ourselves off to church. The church was decorated with these strings of little white flowers that you see everywhere. Jasmine, I think. We got a lot of funny looks and giggles with our dhotis, but they gradually wore off as the monotony of the two hour service set in. The address was well over half an hour, covering everything from Plato and Aristotle to Christ in India today. That's what we were told anyway – for all we knew it could have been a shopping list! We stayed for communion and as everyone seemed to be leaving by this time we left. The service was just like the normal Sunday one, with hours of repetitive sung psalms and responses, prayer and hymns. They did 'Hark the Herald' and some other Tamil hymns we didn't know. We joined in one song and a couple of 'amens'.

We experienced the Indian service alright, a two-hundred year-old SPG liturgy conducted in a sombre 'trying to remember the words and or tune' kind of way. It drags and all the women sit on the floor while half the men have chairs. The younger men and children sit on the floor too. The organist must have been told some time that he only needs to know two notes and he can play any hymn. He does this with such aplomb that the congregation often stumble, wondering if they've got the tune wrong. We had some bloke behind us who sang so loudly and out of tune that no-one else could get going. During the address everyone fell asleep, people were snoring all over the place!

We waited around afterwards, to try and spot Esther and David so we could find out about lunch and someone said they'd gone to Madurai! Our fears grew as we waited and failed to see them. They escalated to such a point that we were against anything to do with Christmas in Ramnad and started planning to go of to Madurai instead. Our list of problems ran thus:

We are in India to be Indian, and therefore to celebrate Christmas (and other festivals) in an Indian style. Without any invitations (if Esther and David had indeed turned out to e in Madurai), how can we do this? Without being with an Indian family there's no scope for any of this. This would never have happened in Madurai. The church there is so friendly and the invitations are given freely and frequently. We've been going to this church for a while now and still no-one talks to us afterwards. Even with our dhotis, there was very little interest.

The only people we could truly say are our Indian friends are Esther and David, because we’ve been to see them most. Rev. Athisayam is a big disappointment, if we'd had no other invitation what would we have done today? He gave no thought to our programme, had nothing arranged and left without giving us dinner. He hasn't helped us at all in anything and still hasn't given us a tour of Ramnad. So we found ourselves with Yesu and Jerry (H.M. at S.M.'s son) trying to solve our problem. They offered to make us a Christmas tree, bring their friends round and give us an Indian Christmas of our own. It was very kind, but that's not the point lads, you're all aged between thirteen and fifteen and now we've become a charity. It's the grownups who are supposed to be responsible. Jerry said we could go to his house for lunch – thanks but how would it look if we went because he's invited us because we had nowhere else to go?

It is nice the boys being around, but where's the real conversation, that spark you need but don't get because they're all so young? It's so much effort to keep track with them all and there's no way I want to spend Christmas like that.

The Rev had asked us to be here for Christmas and we're here but he's left us. Left alone and neglected on Christmas day. It does not feel good, let me assure you. We can't do everything ourselves, but he seems to think we can.