Seenu Handin Lyrics by Christmas CarolsLatha Walpola

With the sound of bells, the world wakes
Christmas is smiling at the door
A star is travelling to a stable
(The sky touches the earth)…//

In the starlight, along the mountain range
In the blessed light of Bethlehem
A rain of flowers is seen falling

Taking wing, the white snow flies
On every branch it shines like pearls
The sun’s rays turn into white arrows
(Everywhere it looks like silver)…//

Tracing the water, combing the mountains
Coming down in a graceful, dancing march
Droplets of water shaking off the body

Day by day the rain clouds grow heavy
The waters of the Mahaweli river turn muddy
Christmas comes, marrying the season
(In the rain-heavy month of Unduvap)…//

Araliya flowers, white vatusudu flowers
Bloom until the branches bend with blossom
In this month of Christmas….

This is a Sri Lankan Christmas carol, and instead of telling a love story it paints Christmas arriving over the whole landscape of the island. It opens with church bells ringing the world awake, Christmas standing and smiling at the door, and a single star making its way toward a stable. That star and stable are the Christmas story itself, the star of Bethlehem leading to the manger where Jesus was born, and the line about the sky touching the earth carries the heart of it, heaven coming down to meet the world.

What makes the song special is that it brings that far-off northern Christmas home to Sri Lanka and folds it into the local seasons. The snow, the pearls on the branches, the sunbeams turning into white arrows, the silver shining everywhere, all of this is the picture-book European Christmas, the cold and the frost most Sri Lankans have only ever seen on cards. The song borrows that imagery for its beauty, then quietly walks it back onto the island.

The turn comes with the rain. December in Sri Lanka is Unduvap, the month of the northeast monsoon, when the clouds grow heavy day by day and the rivers run high. The lyric watches the water tracing down the hills, dancing as it comes, droplets flying off it like a body shaking itself dry, until the great Mahaveli river swells and runs muddy and brown with the rains. This is the real Sri Lankan December, and the song says Christmas arrives hand in hand with this wet, green season, not with snow.

It closes on flowers. The araliya (the temple flower, frangipani) and the white vatusudu bloom until the branches bend under the weight of them. After all the borrowed snow and frost, the song lands on what a Sri Lankan actually sees at Christmas, trees heavy with white blossom in the warm, rainy month. The whole carol is that gentle joining of two worlds, the story of Bethlehem and the familiar look and smell of a Sri Lankan December, so that Christmas feels both holy and completely at home.