The politics of Christmas

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, on Wednesday, Dec. 22nd, 2010.

Do you know that exciting feeling when you realize that you know someone who is rich or someone who is famous, or better yet, both rich and famous? I know; we’re supposed to be immune to that sort of worldly thinking, but there are some things that are universal, and some instincts that are so primal that you cannot control the tingle of excitement.

 Imagine my surprise when my parents and sister returned from a political fundraiser in South Carolina a couple of months ago. I was surprised, first, that they had gone, because they aren’t that politically active, but I was even more surprised by the family connections behind the event.

 You probably do not have any reason to keep up with South Carolina politics, (most people barely keep up with their own area) but the new Governor-elect, due to be sworn into office in about three weeks is an Indian-American woman by the name of Nikki Haley. Her maiden name is Randhawa, and her given name is Nimrata.
 I actually know this woman! OK – that’s a bit of a stretch. I should say, more accurately, that I knew her as a child. OK – even that’s a bit of a stretch, because when I “knew” her, I was about nine years old, and she was a mere three-year-old, a preschooler, when our families got together. That was in the mid-seventies. The 1970’s, thank you.

 Back in the seventies, before being Indian immigrants was commonplace enough to have us lampooned in cartoons or integrated into movies and TV shows as actual elements of real American society, if you were Indian, and you knew another Indian, you became best friends. Automatically. The common background and the huddling together against the foreignness and the newness of the society you had entered and wanted to be a part of, without being changed by it, were a significant enough base on which to form a tight bond.

 My parents have life-long friends and friendships that they formed that way, in addition to the American friends that they have made and stayed in touch with over the years. Surprisingly, they have maintained contact with these friends, even though their friendships were formed in “prehistoric times,” back in the Dark/Slow Age that predates the use of email and Facebook.

 We lived in a tiny town called Denmark, South Carolina. My father taught at a Black college called Voorhees College. In the patch of land devoted to faculty housing, with about fifteen apartments, there were three other Indian families. That’s a pretty high concentration of Indian immigrants in the middle of the rural South. So the families got together often. Remember, we didn’t all have cell phones and have cable television then. In addition to our fellow apartment dwelling families, there were several more established, whether more financially savvy or more secure in their immigration status, who lived in houses in the area.

 The Randhawas were one such family, and we four children would play with their four children. I, being nine, was obviously too sophisticated to be playing with the preschool set in the gathering. I was busy, I believe, doing cooler things like running into the sliding glass door in my rush to get outside to their backyard to play.

 What, you might be wondering, does any of this have to do with Christmas? See what I love about you? As if being the reader of a local newspaper in print wasn’t already enough to qualify you as an exceptional individual, you once again show your astuteness. You are wondering what, on Earth, does name-dropping have to do with this holy time in the Christian calendar.


In a few weeks, someone I knew superficially as a child will come into power. She will hold the highest office in her state. Perhaps this entitles me to call upon her or ask for special favors or privileges. Unfortunately, I never got to know her as an adult. I highly doubt that she knows me.

 For many people, Christ is that little baby in the manger. In their minds, He is forever fixed there, happy and gurgling and awaiting the gifts of the wise men who sought him from afar. They do not know much else about what He grew up to teach, how He turned our concepts of right and wrong and love and hatred right up on their heads.

 He is One on whom we can call, One who knows us and who will never forsake us. He holds a higher office than any office we can envision or approach, and yet He makes Himself available to us. We can seek Him out and petition Him. And He answers. Merry Christmas, all year long.