By S Datta

It is time of biting cold and edgy wait for Christmas to urbane Agartalites as well as to their less fortunate brethren in hills. With temperature hovering around the 6-8 degree Celsius residents of the town scurry back home soon after dusk descends in order to avoid the cold and thick cover of fog that settles down daily almost all over the state. The weathermen have already predicted-rightly at that, for a change-longer and colder winter. The crowding of shops selling benign and genial images of Santa Claus , colourful candles and little bulbs of all shades with little kids pestering parents to make a big buy of all the materials for christmas decorations provide a relief from the general bleakness of winter. Little Sagardeep (9), a class three student of St Paul's School in southern Agartala is determined to celebrate christmas in style . His stock reply to his complaining mother Ms Alaka De (Datta) regarding high prices of everything is : why can not you give me all these? All my friends have bought . The impression is unmistakable that despite the raging war of attrition between the Hindu Jamatia 'Hoda' and the proselytising churchmen stalking the hilly interiors Christmas has already made its way into the host of occasions to be socially celebrated with family functions marked by voracious eating of cakes and meat and sending greetings to dear ones with colourful cards. And this, despite the fact that 99.9% of Agartala's population is Hindu. Little Sagardeep's mother Ms Alaka De (Datta) grumbled to the shop-owner 'you know I have to buy him earthen images of all gods and goddesses except 'Durga' and 'Kali'. To the more orthodox and newly baptised tribal followers of the faith christmas is ,of course, a more sombre occasion to be observed with ritual prayer though the element of merriment is all encompassing. Mr Dakshina Reang , a leader of the dominant baptist church here said 'well christmas is celebrated nearly by all cutting across religious divisions though to us it is important for different reasons'. Mr Reang said according to returns of the 2001 census overall christian population in Tripura is 'a little more than 2% but among the tribals it is more than 7% now'. Compared with the population figures the level of christmas celebration is sure to appear as disproportionately high. 'But it is the question of social acceptability and not the number of believers which is more important' Mr Dakshina Reang conceded. According to information available from Tripura Baptist Christian Union (TBCU) the first group of christians to settle in the state were a band of Portuguese soldiers posted in Chittagong as mercenaries of the Mughal army in the early eighteenth century.The king of Tripura gave them land to settle on at Mariam nagar near Agartala and the first catholic church in Tripura came up there. But the Portuguese gradually melted down with the passage of time and through generations of inter-community marriage they are hardly distinguishable from the local populace. It was much later in 1935 that Mr Harry and his wife Ms Helen Jones obtained royal permission from the then Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya to visit Hawaibari area of present West Tripura. Within three years that missionaries of the New Zealand Baptist Church Mr M.J. Eade and Ms Catherine Eade set up the Tripura Baptist Christian Union (TBCU) at Arundhati nagar area on the southern outskirts of Agartala. "Compared with the time we have worked here our progress in terms of winning over new believers has not been very satisfactory in spite of the fact that four major church denominations including the presbytarians and Evangelical Free Church of India (EFCI) have been working here for past many years' said Reverend Rabindra Debbarma, secretary of the TBCU. His explanation for the growing popularity of christmas as a festival for celebration is : over the years many church denominations have set up english medium schools open to all students all over the state and this may have spurred growing interest of common people, mostly guardians of the students, in christmas besides television channels which focus on all such festivities and celebrations in a big way. Mr Debbarma may be right but christmas has come to stay as a permanent feature of the celebration calendar of more and more people in Tripura.