A Nepali Christmas
Christmas is celebrated amongst the Christian communities in Nepal. However, other communities also participate in non-religious celebrations during Christmas time. In other words, people in Nepal celebrate Christmas as a national festival rather than a religious one.
Christmas in Nepal
People start doing shopping for Christmas from the beginning of December. Christmas Trees are decorated with bells, stars, gift boxes, and other colourful decorations and lit up with twinkling lights. People go to the church during the mid-night and in the morning visit friends to give their best wishes and gifts are exchanged.
In the evenings, the Christian families host special Christmas feasts with roasted chicken, vegetable salad and other Nepali foods along with turkey, pumpkin pies and Christmas puddings. The types of food and celebrations depend on the status and capability of people. However, everyone celebrates the birth of Lord Jesus with zeal and enthusiasm.
On this special day, we also decided to celebrate Christmas along with our culture night. All participants were excited to start celebrations. The program started at 17:30 at the dining hall and all the participants joined with Nepal team to perform and showcase their talents.
To mark the speciality of the day, we set a campfire and a barbecue with Chicken, Fish and Marshmallows. Colourful lights and decorations made the participants feel the Christmas vibe even though they are far away from their homes and loved ones.
The program started with Ms Maureen and Ms Jorien’s presentation about Christmas how it was started and how they celebrate Christmas back home. Then our coordinator Ms Sanjita performed a traditional welcome dance. Participants from China were divided into teams according to the provinces they were from and each team shared about their location, food, and how they celebrate Christmas in their provinces.
As a bonus, everyone got to listen to beautiful songs from china. Participants of Jiang Xi province of China rocked the audience with rock music while playing the Guitar.
We played a game called “Hit the ball” which was fun and Ms Jorien became the winner and won all the candy. Representing the Nepal team, our dancing queen Ms Rupa performed an energetic dance which was amazing as usual and Ms Prathana sang an English song. After the songs and dances, everyone enjoyed the barbecue snacks. Dhini, a Participant of Indonesia, shared interesting facts about life, food, culture and religion in her country.
The conversation became more interesting when Mr Rajesh asked her about a special type of coffee which is only found in Indonesia. A Participant from Hubei province of China performed a dance which was another favourite part of the program.
We played another game called “Hot Potato” where eliminated contestants would have to dance inside a circle while others are passing the ball. At the end of the program, everyone started dancing to songs in Nepali, English as well as Chinese. The event ended with a Nepali-style delicious Christmas feast with barbecue Chicken and fish with Custard dessert and lots of candy.