A Single World Through Different Lenses

Be it Chinese, Italian, American or Indian, celebrations have always connoted happiness; more particularly, they make everyone want to rejoice and express their gratitude by performing certain customs and traditions. With more than 3800 cultures in the world, it is certainly fascinating to wonder about the plethora of cultural celebrations which exist in society. What is even more interesting is to explore how each of these festivities are geographically oceans apart, and yet fundamentally, just the same. How each of these are unique and yet display mutual coexistence is a question with an array of answers. Thanksgiving, popularly celebrated in the United States and Canada; and Diwali, primarily celebrated in India are just two examples of the most extravagant cultural celebrations across the globe.

Thanksgiving Day is when the harvest and blessings of the past year are celebrated. The traditional fare of the Thanksgiving meal typically includes turkey, bread stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. The day is replete with beautiful decorations across whole cities and vehicles filled with enthusiastic families traveling to and fro. It is considered a day on which distant families gather together and spend a memorable time. While the day is mostly linked with a good harvest, it has deep roots in history connecting it to the ideals of victory and a safe return of certain groups. For instance, Days of Thanksgiving were called following the victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 and following the deliverance of Queen Anne in 1605. Moreover, Annual Thanksgiving prayers were dictated by the charter of English settlers upon their safe landing in America in 1619 at Berkeley Hundred in Virginia. It can thus certainly be inferred that Thanksgiving has a rather chequered history.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Diwali—the festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in India. The pivotal ideal of the festival is to commemorate the victory of light over darkness, of good over evil and ignorance over strength. The five-day long festival is celebrated during the Lunar month of Kartika. While the reasons for celebrating Diwali differ from one community to another, one of the primary reasons include celebrating Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. Nonetheless, it is linked with several other deities such as Lord Rama, Sita, Krishna, Ganesha, Kali and Dhanvantari. The widest-known explanation associated with Diwali is the celebration of the magnificent day when Lord Rama returned to his kingdom Ayodhya with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana after defeating Ravana in Lanka and serving 14 years of exile. If understood closely, it is indeed true that the underlying principles governing this festival are also victory and the safe return of a family beloved by all. The point of emphasis here is how these two festivals, completely separate from one another in terms of their locations and people; still boil down to a common idea. Isn’t this the beauty of humanity, after all? We are all apart, yet together. The way we express our feelings may differ but the core feelings remain the same. The joy experienced by someone eating carved turkey on Thanksgiving is no different than the one experienced by someone decorating their house with colorful rangolis and lighted lamps for Diwali. The excitement of donning new clothes and eating sumptuous traditional meals remains the same, irrespective of which culture we talk about. All it comes down to at the end is the fact that every culture possesses varying ways to celebrate their victories, even though the victories may be over different demons.

We all laugh for different reasons, but what matters is the happiness we experience as we enjoy these days. We are all humans and enjoy this very inherent emotion similarly. Cultures therefore, are merely ways in which each individual connects with a slightly different history and gains their identity. Cultures help us make sense of the world around us–through anecdotes of the past and the lessons learned from them. Thanksgiving, Diwali, Eid or Hanukkah–each one of these are the ultimate paragons of celebration. It is indeed right to assert that the world is unequivocally one, sharing the same idea of rejoicing together over victory through a melting pot of cultures.

It’s as if we all see and live in one world while viewing it through different lenses…the lenses of our cultures.