And, of course, these came with a new walking style because new shoes always somehow made you walk funny. Growing up has robbed Christmas of some of its novelty. Today, Christmas has become sober and predictable. It has grown up.
Only children can truly enjoy Christmas because it has an air of spiritual romanticism. It’s the bearded fellow who slinks down chimneys bearing gifts. It’s the jingles and carols.
It’s the flashy red and white colours and Christmas trees that blink in darkness. It’s the tenderness that your parents address you with. And it’s the food, lots of food. Plus they let you stay out late on Christmas. They let you become unruly.
Growing up, Christmas was mostly spent in the village. And nobody complained because it was fun. It was what I like to call an African Christmas.
Instead of snow, there was grass. We played on the grass and in the thickets, and we climbed trees, ate mangoes and watched the green hills.
Instead of reindeer, there were cows and goats. Family was big back then and family stayed together. Your uncles patted you on the head and asked you the questions you hated to be asked, “What position where you last term?”If you had a good grade, they fished for loose change in their pockets and handed them to you. If you had dropped, they would lightly remind you the virtues of working hard. Most of those uncles have passed on.
Christmas meant watching grandfather wobble on his walking stick to his seat under the tree where he listened to an old National radio.
Grandpa was the closest thing to Santa Claus with his white hair. But grandpa wouldn’t climb down any chimney, not in his clean pressed pants, shirt and tie. Back then, they wore ties to sit under a tree.
People respected themselves enough to dress decently. Christmas also meant going to Church and sitting for hours on end. And the truth is that church was boring because it cut into our play time.
We would fiddle uncomfortably in our chairs willing the time to pass quickly. But at the end of church, a big feast awaited. There was chicken and rice and rice and meats, and beans and cassava and vegetables and ugali.
It was a food festival and the whole extended family would eat and laugh together. And they would eat, not with forks and knives but with their fingers. I saw the biggest ugali being moulded into enormous lumps those days, a lump big enough to give you a concussion if it was hurled at your head.
But the feast didn’t start before someone stood up to bless the food, and that someone would normally be an ageing person who obviously wasn’t hungry enough because they would pray until the stew grew leaves.
The women would all be in colorful kitenges and the men in trousers and shirts firmly tucked in. Everybody was well-scrubbed. And people smiled a lot, even at strangers.
People reached out, they invited neighbours who didn’t have to eat with them, even if they weren’t dressed as nicely. And all this love was felt by the village dogs as well because apart from being well-fed from the left-overs, nobody kicked them around on Christmas dayThere was an air of generosity in the air. An air of togetherness. Christmas was that big then and we all looked forward to the day. Today, (maybe because I’m much older) Christmas is spent behind gates and long fences.
It is spent with family and sometimes friends as well. Alcohol seems to be the centre of gravity in such functions because perhaps that’s the only way people can enjoy each other’s company.
Children now ask about Santa Claus, not about grandpa and that’s okay really because it’s a different reality. The innocence is all but gone from Christmas because even when you are knocking back your whisky, there is always that niggling voice at the back of your mind saying, “Psst, school fees, school fees!”
