On a TV show I watch, an Indian family celebrated Christmas. The show doesn’t address whether or not the family is Christian.
Do (South Asian) Indians in the US celebrate Christmas strictly as a cultural holiday? Do a significant number of (South Asian) Indians who immigrated convert to Christianity when they get to the US?
Yes, I know that India has a (comparatively small) population of Christians.
Since this is FQ, is the question, “Do a lot of South Asians convert to Christianity when they get to the US”?
The closest I can get to an answer is:
Religion
About half of Indian Americans (48%) identify as Hindu. In total, two-thirds of Indian Americans say either that they are Hindu or that they identify with another religion but feel closely connected to Hinduism for other reasons, such as family background or culture.
Another 15% of Indian Americans identify as Christian, 15% are religiously unaffiliated and 8% are Muslim; 11% identify with some other faith.
From here: Indian Americans: A Survey Data Snapshot | Pew Research Center
Since only 15% of Indian Americans identify as Christian, lots of those were probably Christian before, I wouldn’t say that a significant number convert when they get here.
In my personal anecdotal experience, none of the Indians I know are Christian to my knowledge.
The following is a sample size of 3.
My beloved is a Christian. She believes in the divinity of Christ. She is crazy about Christmas and keeps an articial tree in the living room all year. I never got to know her parents very well. Mostly because they despise me. I gather her late father was primarily Hindu. However, he did attend Methodist services at times. He had a priest visit him in the week before he died. I know her mother worships some Hindu goddesses. I cannot remember which ones I think, but am not sure, Lakshmi and Durga.
Despite being Christian, she does feel closely connected to Hinduism just as the cite above says. She is fond of depictions of Krisha and Radha (his wife). They can be found in various places in her apartment. During a trip to a town in New Jersey that is essentially Little India, one of the things she bought was a bansoura. I probably spelled that wrong. It is a traditional bamboo flute often heard in Hindu devotional music. We have visited Hindu temples, attend The Festival Of Chariots each year, and once we went to a celebration of Holi ( a festival of throwing colored dye at each other). She wants a sitar. They are $1000 and up. 
ETA
I did spell it wrong Bansuri - Wikipedia
I am a raised-Catholic South Asian from Pakistan, but of South Indian ancestry living in the US for mumble decades. My friends and very large extended family in the USA, Canada and Australia seem to contain every combination of religion and ethnicity imaginable if you include their spouses (South Asian, White, East Asian, Middle/Near Eastern, Southeast Asian, Catholic, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, non-religious, Zoroastrian)
A couple of the Muslim families do not celebrate Christmas at all. No decorating, no Christmas tree, no gift exchange, no holiday greetings to anyone. These are classmates whose wives’ faces I have never seen and whose daughters disappeared at age 10-11 from my view.
Pretty much everyone else has some participation in at least the more secular aspects and will greet Christian people (or any white or Black people really) with a holiday or seasonal greeting.
We had Hindu Indian neighbors who happily put up Christmas lights and a tree, celebrating Christmas as an adopted cultural holiday. Just like this atheist and his equally atheist wife happily put up Christmas lights and a tree every year as our ancestral cultural holiday. We take as our defining text Dickens A Christmas Carol rather than the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. No nativity scene here, I passed the ceramic set my mother made down to my niece.
Yep. I do a lot of work in the Hindu community, and I’ve noticed many/most of them have adopted Christmas as a secular holiday. I got Christmas cards for them, for example. I’m looking through their Facebook posts and I see Christmas trees. It seems not uncommon for non-Christian South Asians, at least around here (Chicago and suburbs), to celebrate the holiday. Similarly, at one of my children’s Catholic school, they celebrate Diwali in the fall and Holi in the Spring (even though there are maybe 15% Hindu Indians there.)
Yes, Christmas is pretty ubiquitous in mainstream American society; generally the only people who don’t participate at all are those who are actively committed to non-Christian religions. I certainly wouldn’t assume that anyone who puts up a tree and some lights must therefore believe in the divinity of Jesus.
My wife said a Sikh coworker mentioned he came home to find his kids had put up a small Christmas tree and were playing south Asian Christmas carols. They have a sense of humour.
( “Punjabi Sleigh Ride” by Vindaloo Singh is on YouTube)
The post tells me “says sorry you can’t embed media items in a post”
I usually avoid telling my beloved of happenings on the SDMB. I just sent her a link to your post. She was born in America, but lived in India for quite a few years. She speaks fluent Hindi. We often watch Bollywood videos or listen to pagans (pronounced pah jahns. Roughly, they are hymns to various Hindu gods sung in Hindi). I enjoy those very much. I cannot wait to witness Punjabi Sleigh Ride with her!
I’m in the U.S. My coworker is Sikh and grew up in Punjab. Her immediate family also lives in the U.S. They all have Christmas trees and celebrate Christmas with gift exchanges, parties, etc.
(Her and I are also friends, and we occasionally talk about religion. She’s confided in me that she thinks all religions are nonsense, and only goes to the Sikh gurdwara a couple times a year to appease some of her family members.)
I forgot to mention- I am seeing her tonight for a holiday dinner with friends. I can do more research then. Saturday we are going to an Urglawe ritual. Urglawe is not an Indian thing. It is a Pennsylvnia Dutch thing. While most of them are Christian, some worship Teutonic/Germanic gods of old. We can’t wait!
Christmas is a national holiday in India. And at least with Hindus, there is no religious inconsistency. Christianity, and most other religions (even Islam) mix just fine with Hinduism (although not the other way around). Pretty much every Hindu family I know (which is a lot) began celebrating Christmas as soon as they first arrived in the US and Canada.
I live in a heavily Indian suburban neighborhood in Nassau County just east of Queens. There are homes with marble lions and elephants and tents for weddings and all that. They put up Christmas decorations with enthusiasm.
Very warm and friendly folks.
Australia is not very religious. But we do Xmas as much as anywhere. Increasingly few people would consider it to have anything to do with religion. It’s just a holiday/family thing with certain traditions associated with it.
I suspect the same holds true for South Asian Indians in the US, in the same way
There was a couple from Sri Lanka who were members at a church I belonged to. They came from an Anglican congregation back at their home. I saw a Bible in Tamil they had, the script is gorgeous.
Heck, that’s true for many people of whatever origin in the United States, for whom Christmas is a secular holiday.
Ditto in Canada. (Oh wait, that’s every neighbourhood in Canada today). Many of the south Asians have their house exteriors heavily lit up with Christmas string lights as enthusiastically my European neighbours. I wonder if that fits in with Diwali too…
I once did a presentation for my church on different foods that show up for Christmas in many cultures. In Japan the meal for Christmas is strawberry cream cake and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I’m telling the truth!
Saw a cartoon recently which I can’t find now to link to, so you’ll just have to imagine it.
Two people walking past a church that has Xmas decorations. One is saying to the other
“Great. Now even the church is getting on the Xmas bandwagon!”
Way back in 2016, Arie Van De Graaff published this one.
