Christmas Decorating - Sikkim Style

It is always interesting to me to see how different western traditions and customs have been changed and adapted as they have been introduced over here, and decorating for Christmas was no exception.

The first step for Christmas decorating was to find a Christmas tree.  As there are no grocery stores around here with parking lots full of pre-cut trees and no tree farms with fields and fields of perfectly shaped trees ready to be cut, we had to search a bit harder to find our Christmas tree.  It is actually illegal here to cut down an entire tree, but limbs of trees are generally acceptable.  So I ventured into the forest with three of my nieces to try and find suitable limbs to make our Christmas trees.

My niece Snowly and I heading out with the sickle we're going to use to cut down our tree.

My niece Kasis and I.  She decided she also wanted to hold one of the sickles for a picture... and I decided that I wanted to get that picture over with quickly and get that sickle out of her hands!

We needed to find two Christmas trees – one for my house and one for my nieces Keran and Kasis’s house.  The first tree we found quite quickly.  We cut it down and set off to find another one.  

Snowly making the first cuts on the limb that is going to be our Christmas tree!

Me and our freshly cut tree

My niece Keran posing for a picture

My niece Kasis.  She's adorable!

Along the way my nieces started picking fern plants off of the forest floor.  Apparently these ferns have edible roots.  They cleaned some off and gave them to me to eat.  They were quite good.  Locally they are called “panni amalla” or “water amalla.”

Panni amalla

Kasis searching through roots to find some panni amalla

We continued on through the forest looking for a nice tree, but couldn't find a good one.  After several hours of looking (and a couple stops at friend’s and relative’s houses for refreshment along the way) we returned back to where we found the first tree and cut off a small branch to use as Keran and Kasis’s tree.  It wasn’t as nice as we wanted, but it worked.

Returning home with our trees

Our Christmas trees!!!

Around here they typically keep their Christmas tree outside, in front of the house.  We decided to put ours at the top of our stairs in an open-air passage.  Of course there are no Christmas tree stands over here, so instead we basically planted the tree in a metal container.

Getting ready to decorate the tree

Snowly digging up some dirt to plant the tree in

My sister in-law planting the tree

I brought my Christmas ornaments with me when I moved over here so we used those to decorate the tree.  Passang also now has a couple ornaments from my grandma and grandpa (they give all of us a new ornament every year) so he got to put those on.  We put lights on the tree and Snowly put bits of cotton to look like snow.  She also made a sign to put at the base.

Snowly putting cotton on the tree

Hanging ornaments

Our sign

Passang hanging his ornaments

Our finished Christmas tree!

Keran and Kasis's tree at their house

While Snowly and I were decorating the tree Passang was putting up the Christmas lights.  I was quite surprised by the way he put them up.  First he ran wire along the top of the house.  Then he put metal pins through the wire at the places he wanted to attach the lights.  He then taped the plugs of the Christmas lights to the pins.  In that way he was able to get electricity to all of the lights exactly where he wanted them.  It was totally jerry-rigged and kind of scared me, but it actually worked quite well!

Passang on our roof running wire for our Christmas lights

The pins that he stuck through the wires

Taping the Christmas light plugs to the pins

Hanging the lights

Christmas lights here are not usually strung along the edges of the houses here, as they are in the US.  Instead they hang them them straight down the house.

Our Christmas lights

Passang also put up a lit star at the top of a bamboo pole on top of our house.  The star is the most common Christmas decoration here.  If Christians do nothing else, they typically at least put up a star as high as they can that shines brightly at night.  Since most of the people in Sikkim are Buddhist or Hindu, it’s really pretty cool to see random stars dotting the landscape, signifying the families that have become Christian.

Our Christmas lights with our star on the top of our house

With our Christmas tree decorated, our Christmas lights strung, and our star shining at the top of our house, we were ready to celebrate Christmas!