HOME FOR CHRISTMAS THE GREAT GOAN RETURN

In Goa, December is not just a month on the calendar; it is a migration in reverse.

- By Gauri Ghadge

For much of the year, the state lives with a quiet truth that many of its people are elsewhere: in the Gulf on contracts, in London and Lisbon on older routes, in Mumbai and Bengaluru on workweeks that never seem to end. Yet as Christmas approaches, the direction of travel subtly flips. Tickets are booked, leave is negotiated, WhatsApp groups wake up, and village lanes begin to anticipate familiar footsteps.

This return is not only about religious observance. It is about kitchens that have waited months to be fully alive, the choreographed labour of preparing sweets, the comfort of sleeping under the same roof as grandparents, and the feeling: brief, intense, almost sacred, that one belongs to a story larger than work, visas, and distance. Official Goa Tourism communication frames the festive season as culminating in a weeklong celebration from Christmas to New Year, when churches glow with lights and music, carols fill the air, markets and neighbourhood gatherings expand late into the evening, and the season is presented as a shared invitation to celebrate and reconnect.

A HISTORY OF LEAVING, AND THE MEANING OF COMING BACK

Goa's relationship with migration is old and layered. Academic work on Goan migration to the Middle East describes "guest workers" leaving families behind in Goa and sending remittances that shape household life and the local economy. Scholarship on Goan communities in Portugal likewise examines migration histories and the continuing engagement between diaspora communities and Goa. Migration, in other words, is not a recent plot twist in the Goan story; it is a force that has shaped family structures, aspirations, and ideas of home.