
The Many Ways of Celebrating an Indian Christmas
In the 1950s and ’60s, women baked cakes in the abandoned ammunition boxes left behind by British troops in the villages of Nagaland, a state in northeast India. The Naga writer Easterine Kire recalls how wives of Christian missionaries taught English and cake-baking to young girls, including her mother. While they didn’t really pick up the language, the tradition of baking cakes was passed down “from mother to daughter and from daughter to granddaughter.” It was the men who thought to repurpose