Why do some 'Sikhs' celebrate Christmas

[Ranjeet01]

8 hours ago, Jonny101 said:

I'm sure that might be the case in India but certainly not in the West where Sikhs are in no danger of reverting back to Hinduism.

 

In the west the ideologies of Christianity and western secularism is what many people end up assimilating into Sikhi. Celebrating Christmas is back door entry to both those ideologies. Opening up your family to Western secularism or western universalism is more dangerous than Christianity which leads one to becoming a secular followed by agnostic or worse atheist. 

I think you will find that the longer the diaspora is in the west, the more we will assimilate to western cultural values and western norms.

Christmas in reality has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, it is a winter pagan festival. We have our winter festival in lohri and I think that a lot of our people are now aligning a lot of our cultural norms with the goreh. 

I went to a couple of funerals and I have observed the wearing of black compared with wearing the traditional white. In our native lands, we never wear black but there are changes taking place.

[MisterrSingh]

1 hour ago, Ranjeet01 said:

I think you will find that the longer the diaspora is in the west, the more we will assimilate to western cultural values and western norms.

Christmas in reality has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, it is a winter pagan festival. We have our winter festival in lohri and I think that a lot of our people are now aligning a lot of our cultural norms with the goreh. 

I went to a couple of funerals and I have observed the wearing of black compared with wearing the traditional white. In our native lands, we never wear black but there are changes taking place.

Western secularism is an easy target on which to pin the blame when an individual or a group can't retain control over its people and their thought processes, but take a look back home and observe Punjabi and Indian secularism that has elements of Westernisation practised by people who haven't set foot outside their village. How's that managed to emerge when the people are surrounded by cultural and religious reminders and norms on an almost overwhelmingly constant basis?

[Ranjeet01]

1 hour ago, MisterrSingh said:

Western secularism is an easy target on which to pin the blame when an individual or a group can't retain control over its people and their thought processes, but take a look back home and observe Punjabi and Indian secularism that has elements of Westernisation practised by people who haven't set foot outside their village. How's that managed to emerge when the people are surrounded by cultural and religious reminders and norms on an almost overwhelmingly constant basis?

There are some strange paradoxes for sure.

People from Punjab are far more fluid, the diaspora is far more rigid.

The cultural values the diaspora follow are not the same values people in Punjab or more recent Punjabi migrants follow. 

The Punjabi values we follow are based from the mid 20th century, it is very alien to the Punjabi values today. 

If a western Sikh grows up with Christmas it is because it is something that has been internalised as it is cultural norm.

If it is someone from Punjab or India, then it is because it is seen as being modern.