Christmas celebrated before the arrival of the Portuguese

by E.Weerapperuma

We are celebrating Christmas today. At every Christmas we are reminded of His birth and also of His Mission for which He took the human form. Christ completed His Mission winning back to us the lost relationship with the Divine.

Christmas is also a reminder of the glorious Second Coming, the Eschatological coming of Jesus Christ at the End of Time. Jesus Christ intended to be with us until the End of Time and at the Last Supper established the Sacrament of Holy Communion. He comes to us Catholics as our food daily at the Holy Mass the banquet in the form of a host to be with us every moment of our lives. Emmanuel ...: God is with us at every turn of our lives.

Mary, the young lass of Judea was the choice of the Divine from all eternity and her genuine and humble submission to the Will of God “I am the Hand maid of the Lord “paved the way for the Salvation Course to play its historical role among His Creation, as willed by the Triune God and fulfilled the Divine Promise made to our first parent Adam and Eve before they were thrown out of the paradise.

If the mission for which Christ came turned a failure, then there would not be celebration of Christmas for this long two centuries and none will care to talk about Christianity. But the fact is that Jesus Christ; the Anointed One came and by His Death and Resurrection He restored our lives. So there is Life, Death and the culmination point of our faith Resurrection and hence there is profound meaning in celebrating Christmas.

Focal point

We are therefore not celebrating the commercialized Christmas but Christmas with Christ as the focal point or the cynosure. Without Christ no Christmas and that has to be imprinted in every heart and mind of men and women of good will who look for Christ in every action of those profess Christ and try their best to live up to His teaching that revolutionized every strata of social life.

Having said that my intension through this essay is to draw the attention of readers of good will to the fact that Catholics in this country are not an alien species as some try to portray but they are genuine sons and daughters of this Land of the Small Wonder; the Pearl of Indian Ocean and the Tear Drop of Asian Region, as Sri Lanka is referred to by the rest of the world.

Catholics and for that matter all groups, genuinely adhering to the teaching of Jesus Christ, The Way, The Truth and The Life and those who profess Christ as their Lord and Master, they are sons and daughters of this soil, their Motherland. They are not foreign and strangers, but are part and parcel of this land with every right enjoyed by everyone else, claiming to be of this soil.

Preaching the word of God and relating the Salvation story at every part of the globe is a Divine Command. And yet God did not force man, his creation to adore him by force and hence it is of paramount importance to underscore the fact that there is no proselytizing which means that there is no need to make an attempt to bring legislation to prevent conversions. Such naive attempts will only create mistrust and unwanted divisions among the people who live in peace, harmony and unity.

The Kings of this nation country respected the human rights about which we make a loud noise from the house-tops today.

They allowed the people to convert to any religion of their choice without outside force and that freedom was loud and clear. The Kings also supported every religion to grow and there were no any sort of hindrance to the growth and wellbeing, directly coming from the royal arm whoever lived abiding to the dictates of their conscience.

The Maha Wansa, the chronicle has failed to give Christianity of this land her rightful place. We claim to live in a global village, and carefully studying the pages of history of our neighbours we find that they have not failed to keep a record of what had happened in and around them. There is reference to this beautiful land in those historical notes.

Such Historical evidence gathered from excavations, continued research and scholarly work of the experts both here and overseas strengthen the fact that Christianity was known to the islanders and that Christians were living in pockets in several parts of the country long before the arrival of the Portuguese.

Records

If one carefully and analytically read the Christian Encyclopedia would come to accept without any hesitation the presence of Christians here and that the origin of Christianity in Sri Lanka goes back to the times of the Apostles, the first century of human history after the Birth of Jesus Christ. That is why the existential historian refers to St Thomas Christians, Christians of St Francis Xavier and the like.

The history also records that even in the rank and file of Court officials of Sinhalese dynasty there were Christians and Migara Senevi is a classic example. Suffice it to say that Christianity was well rooted here and where ever Christians live in the island nation, Christmas was celebrated in its true sense.

The finding of Nestorian Cross in Anuradhapura and Cross St Thomas within portals of Greater Colombo, go back to five centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese. Historians with no bias and impartial, note the arrival of Portuguese at a particular time of history a blessing in disguise and Sri Lanka remains predominantly a country with Buddhist majority today thanks to their arrival, though sudden and unexpected.

Had Christianity received the blessings of the Sinhalese Kings in the sense that the entire members of Royalty embraced Christianity like in the countries of the West; much weight would have been in favour of spreading the story of Salvation, the Presence of God among His people to a greater degree.

But perusing the pages of history we realize although there were kings who favoured Christianity but purely on mundane purposes they refrained from embracing the religion but allowed the people to do what they genuinely felt right, and there was freedom to the citizens to embrace the religion of their choice. Thus there was no ruling against spreading of the Teaching of Christ, Light of the World. It is from those converted Catholics, who shun all perks and positions, suffered persecution and faced bravely martyrdom adhering genuinely the faith they embraced, remained true to it and there was no going back and thanks to them, Catholic faith is alive to this day, down many generations.

It is good for any one genuinely interested to see their faith grow, to adopt Asokan principles inscribed in the rocks. “Honour other religions” admonished the Buddhist Emperor Asoka in his rock Edict Xll and had said that “honouring the other religions, one helps to the growth of his own religion.”

Though some extreme elements try to corner the Christian living here as aliens, the Sinhalese who profess Catholic faith and those others belonging to various denominations or sects of the same faith could claim without any hesitation that Catholics and Christians are truly part and parcel of this land and they are true sons and daughters of Mother Sri Lanka though differ by religion and ethnicity.

Sri Lanka's modern history makes reference to the force-landing of Lorenco de Almeida in Galle harhour and from there moving on to Colombo harbor on November 15 of 1505 as the official date of introducing Christianity. But that positioning does not hold water any longer and that one could safely come to the conclusion that Christianity was taking roots firmly in the Sri Lanka soil long before the arrival of the foreign nationals beginning from the Portuguese. This preamble is set here to say that holding fast to the historical facts now being unearthed and the First Christmas Night goes back to the far beyond period of Portuguese arrival and their stay counting more than 150 years.

We read that there were Christians of St Thomas, Christians of St Francis Xavier and like, counting their faith-origin to the Saints who visited this land and preached the Good News responding to faithfully to the Command of Jesus Christ to go forth to the four corners of the world and preach the dhamma, the message of Salvation and that the Kingdom of God is already here inviting all men of good will to follow Jesus, the Way, the Truth and Life.

This Christmas takes us to roots of our faith-origin and invites us to ponder upon this fact and examine how we have grown with the tenets of our faith without losing our ethnic and cultural identity as Sri Lankans. The arrival of the Dutch and persecution faced by the Catholics under the hands of the Dutch and local, provincial kings did not dissuade but persuade to live in faith they newly found.

While the arrival of Portuguese was seen as the time Christianity got off the ground in an official manner the persecution escalated in the hands of the local / provincial kings and the Dutch strengthened the faith through the ‘Blood of Martyrs'.

The times of Blessed Joseph Vaz, the Apostle of Sri Lanka Christianity faced persecution and also had the blessing and protection of the Kandyan Kings. It is after the arrival of Fr. Joseph Vaz, the first recorded Christmas Night celebrations take place in the Northern Province and the miraculous escape of Fr.Vaz.

It does not mean that Christian lived within the first five centuries did not celebrate Christmas, Easter or other feasts of Saints known to them.

Today Christmas means having a gala time shopping, eating and drinking. There is nothing wrong in feasting but what is wrong is to lose the sight of the true message of Christmas.

The Vatican Information Service quoting His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI said: “The ‘presence’ of God has the wonderful and awe-inspiring meaning. God Himself has crossed over from Heaven and inclined towards man; He has made a covenant with man, entering into the history of His people. He taking on human flesh and becoming one of us. His presence reminds us that God has not left this world, He is not absent and has not abandoned us to our own devices.” (VIS December 12.2012).

The commercialized Christmas has buried the true meaning of the Christmas, our ancestors celebrated since the arrival of Saints who blessed this land with their presence and celebrating Christmas true to its message. It is time for us to dive into the past as a community and unearth what is hidden and beneath to ascertain the truth that Sri Lanka celebrated Christmas long before the arrival of the foreign powers.

The historical sketches buried under the sand of times would be surfaced with new research and vouch to the fact the early Christian celebrated Christmas. Of course they did not commercialize the feasts but lived the spirit.