Staying Connected to Cultural Roots via Food

Food has a remarkable ability to bring people together and create a sense of connection.

- Chinmay Damle

It is often the primary point of contact in experiencing and learning about a different culture and helps broaden our understanding of the world around us.

On January 1, 1928, an article written by Mohan Keshav Shaligram was published in the Marathi newspaper "Dnyanaprakash". Born and brought up in Pune, Shaligram studied physics at the University College London and later taught at a college in Edinburgh.

The long article described the New Year festivities in Scotland. He delved into the history of Christmas and New Year celebrations in European countries including England and Scotland. He wrote in detail how the festivals kept evolving through centuries and how they were affected by geography, climate, religiosity, wars, famines, and rulers. He then wrote passionately about the Hogmanay he had witnessed in Edinburgh.

Hogmanay, the Scottish celebration of the turning of the New Year, was the biggest celebration in the Scottish calendar. The modern Christmas ritual had spread slowly through regions and social classes of Britain, reaching Scotland in its full form last of all. For the Scots, Christmas was essentially an English festival they resisted, partly for their own nationalistic and economic reasons, and partly because of a fundamental difference in religious beliefs. The ruling class in the seventeenth century Britain believed that the Christmas celebration was a decadent indulgence unbefitting the Puritans. The Presbyterian Church had positioned itself against Christmas because they considered it pagan with no authority in the New Testament.

While the expatriates took Christmas to India and made it the nationally accepted form of the winter festival, the Scots stayed loyal to Hogmanay. They worked over Christmas and celebrated their winter solstice holiday at New Year when family and friends would gather to party and exchange gifts.