Asia > Sri Lanka > West Coast > Negombo > Articles > Escaping Christmas in Sri Lanka

My view on Christmas isn't exactly that of Scrooge, but more like the policy of the Olympic Games Committee. It's too expensive, draining and hysterical to hold the event annually, but having it once every four years is a lot of fun. So that's pretty much what I do. But following the dictates of the 'leap-Christmas' leaves me with the problem of finding non-Noel alternatives for three years out of four.

Muslim countries without a significant tourism infrastructure are good bets, as are parts of Africa. Remote rural retreats in depopulated areas of Europe can be Christmas-free, if somewhat lonely. And, until this year, when post-Pope-visit, Castro reinstated December 25th as a public holiday, Cuba offered everything a Christmas escapee could desire; sun soaked beaches, alcohol, and plenty of dancing. In fact a sort of glorified office-party but with instant sunstroke for anybody dumb enough to dress up in red Duffle coat, cotton-wool beard and Wellington boots.

A few years back I rather imagined that Sri Lanka would provide the same 'no-Ho-Ho-Ho!' asylum. My friend Carla had just completed three months of aid work in a small village inland from Colombo, and I had flown out to join her for a trip through India. We had a few days, over Christmas, to kill before our flight to Trivandrum, and thought a Sri Lankan beach would be the perfect refuge.

On Christmas Eve, (though I noted it merely as December 25th in my diary) we left the capital on the top deck of a decommissioned Routemaster bus. The destination plaque still read; '22 - Sloane Square - Putney Heath' though the bus was now serving the Colombo-Negombo route. Negombo boasted a beach, palm trees, and small out-rigger canoes scudding across a lagoon.

We had light packs, a few books and tickets for our Boxing Day flight onwards. But having failed to change money before the banks closed for three days we had a pitiful amount of rupees. Our survival depended on complex fiscal horse-trading along the lines of "Well, if I don't have a breakfast we can have beer tonight, but if we walk rather than taking the bus to the edge of town, I can have a cup of tea now, as well."

Knowledge of Sri Lanka's 70% Buddhist and 16% Hindu population had lulled me into a false sense of security on the Christmas front. It hadn't occurred to me to ask where the country's 14% Christian minority might be practising their seasonal rituals. The answer was Negombo. "Welcome, Sir and Lady, to Little Rome" the bus driver heralded, waving his hand at the town as we climbed down into the dust of Lewis Street. There were several large churches in view, and in a palm-shaded garden a choir of small children practised 'Little Town of Bethlehem.'

The cheapest hotel, and by definition our choice, was also the one that had displayed the greatest 'Blue Peter-esque' ingenuity in fashioning Christmas decorations out of tropical foliage, strings of newspaper cut-outs, and sliced up plastic bottles. In the dusk a fine snow of mosquitoes sifted through the candlelight.

That evening, in the dark, we strolled the small lanes between the houses behind the beach. Stalls were selling cheap bangers, thunder flashes and Roman candles. Gangs of small boys gathered around little fizzing bombs, or lobbed Catherine wheels under the chairs of dozing grandparents. As we walked we found ourselves part of a growing throng, in their Sunday best. Small girls were dressed like Sugar Plum fairies in white lace confirmation dresses. Those small boys still under any kind of parental control had pressed shorts and oil slicked hair.

In the silence between the retorts and explosions, small noises were magnified, and the hundreds of feet shuffling through the dry crust of sand sounded as if they were breaking through a hard frost. Handshakes and smiles drew us along with the crowd and through the door of a towering beachside church. We were in the town's fishing quarter, and a growing congregation were gathering for midnight Mass. The pews were already full, and women had plumped down in the aisles, their children scattered around them, whilst rough fishermen spilt out of the open side doors and into the Voodoo gloom of the graveyard.

Carla and I had been adopted by three stylish women, whose costumes married Edwardian propriety to disco glitz. Picture hats dipped across their brows, artful make-up gave them the look of Mulatto Madonna’s, and their dresses were teasing fantasies plumed with artificial feathers. A pew was cleared for them, and for us.

If we were seated with the angels, it was only appropriate that the mass should become a symbolic battle between light and dark. A generator thumped away in the far background, providing power for an electric organ that swirled Baroque accompaniment to the line of choristers singing their hearts out in front of the altar. Powerful lights made their white surplices glow like neon, and the pulpitted priest seemed to be borne aloft on a cloud of pure radiance.

But then there was a distant hiccup and a change in the generator's pulse. It's tempo slowed to a halt. The lights faded away until only a blue luminescence coming from the graveyard lit the church. The organ, too, died to nothing, and the pure voices faltered, drowned out by the crackle and explosion of fireworks and a battering of drums being played on the beach. A child cried.

Then there was a defiant churning from the generator and the lights leapt back, and the organ shrieked to a crescendo carrying the singing voices with it. The drums and the blue glow retreated. But already there was a falter in the generator's throb, and the lights began to fade...

On the 25th December after a late, and simple breakfast, we walked along the beach and back into the palm groves. A family of Tamil shipwrights were adzing baulks of timber into banana-shaped fishing rafts. I spotted a small child laid on a sheet amidst a jumble of carpentry tools and for some reason thought of Christmas. Shaking off the treacherous thought I led Carla deeper into the palm trees. Above us a 'toddy tapper' trotted a zigzag course on tight ropes crossing from one tree's crown to the next over a half kilometre aerial route. At each tree he decanted the sap collected from a dripping gash into a gourd.

As he shinned down the final tree, he stopped to lay his head against its trunk and incant thanks to the spirit within for sharing its bounty with him. He called me over and passed me a small bottle of toddy - the fermented and alcoholic sap - to taste. "This toddy is very good hot," he said, as I mopped the perspiration from my brow, "very good for fever, very good for colds." He paused, "Yes, and best thing, this toddy is very good for drinking."

Having played a full hand of midnight Mass, a carpenter's son and a draught of hot toddy, Christmas seemed to be getting the better of us. But it was romance and not the festive season that prompted us to pile up our rupees and budget a steak and wine dinner at a modest beachside restaurant that night. We were the only customers and we had barely sat down and begun to apportion our micro-economy to each stage of the meal, when a group of carol singers arrived.

Breathless children, hastily dressed as angels, they clustered around us, bickered briefly, and launched into 'Good King Wencelas.' Charmed we handed over our pudding money. The restaurant dog harried them out of the door.

A quarter of an hour later a new group of carollers poured in and surrounded us. They were teenagers dressed as multiples of the Three Kings, and they sang 'Ding Dong Merrily on High,' whilst one strummed a guitar. With good grace we handed over our wine money. We were halfway through the part of the meal we could still afford and sharing a bottle of beer when the next group arrived. It had become nerve-wracking - we had no spare money, but these were a cabal of venerable, blind oldsters in matching red shirts.

They tapped their white sticks across the sand covered wooden floor of the veranda, and encircled our table. Some of them stretched out their hands to take the hands of their neighbours, holding them lightly by the fingers as if for reassurance. There was a collective intake of breath and then a honeyed harmony of voices, a pure descant through 'Oh, Come All Ye Faithful.' Enraptured, Carla and I held hands too, and looking out over the Indian Ocean, listened.

I placed our breakfast money in the small bag they held out, thanking them and making small talk. Carla mentioned that she was Dutch. Huddling close they whispered amongst themselves briefly, and there was a snatch of humming. Then opening into a line again they wove a pure soprano, a quartet of tenors and rolling bass through 'Stille Nacht.' There were tears in our eyes when they had finished. "Here," I told Carla, "goes the taxi money for the airport." I put the notes and coins into the bag.

The next morning, breakfastless, we slogged our way on foot through the town to find a bus to the airport. As we stood by the bus stop, a passing snack vendor on a bicycle gestured at his glass case full of food. I shook my head, "Sorry, but no money." He stopped and picked out two pickled fish rolls. "Here! Presents! Time of giving. It's Christmas." My problem was I didn't know if this all had counted as Christmas or not. If it had, then I was going to have re-calculate my leap-Christmas all over again.

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