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All these Christmas stories are making me homesick.

Christmas like I remember started like around the ending ending of October when all the radio stations would be playing Christmas music,the closer it got to Christmas the more frequently they are played. I grew up in the East so Christmas is always associated in my mind with harmattan season. It would be cold, dry and dusty. In the apartment complex where we lived while growing up, almost every family went to their village to celebrate so the ‘watchman’ used to be compensated well before hand so he’d keep an eye out on our property. People started leaving as soon as school closed for the holidays and the last to go often left around the 23rd or 24th. I remember that at that time our neighbor and my mum would buy a big basket of tomatoes to share. On the way back to our village-which was like an hour away-we saw other cars loaded with belongings and happy children and sometimes an slightly open trunk so the chicken and torotoro could breathe. Lol.

Anyway, by the time we got to the village other cousins would be there or be on the way and it was always a happy reunion for all the cousins and proud grandparents. All the cousins came together and compared clothes, money and stashes of knockout/banger. As soon as we were done greeting everybody, we hit the stream, maybe with little cans to convince the adults we weren’t gong to just play. We always swam till we turned blue in the face and red in the eyes.

Christmas eve, the cooking started. Meat was tenderized and cooked in preparation for frying on Christmas morning. On Christmas eve night, we went to church for the service armed with knockouts/bangers. And even while we were in church we could hear others blasting away the knockouts/bangers, we would become restless. As soon as service was over, we went outside blasting our knockouts/bangers away to the chagrin of the adults. When we eventually stopped running wild and were coralled by the adults, we went home and continued with the knockouts/bangers under adult supervision. If we ran out, doting uncles and aunts and grandparents replenished our stash.

On Christmas day gon gon, the sweet aroma of stew and meat awakened us. The adults would get the older children to help get the younger ones ready for Christmas day service. Before we left for church, we had something light like bread and tea saving our appetites for the feast to come. We went to church dressed in our brand new Christmas clothes, shoes and freshly braided hair for the girls or smart crew-cut for the guys and no matter how great service was we itched to go home. Whenever service ended, we were made to greet more relatives bfore we went home. As soon as we got home, we dined on rice and stew, jollof rice, fried rice, chicken, beef, salad, chin-chin, and lots of fanta (who ever thought of calories or sugar then?). The food would not even digest before we began running wild again with other kids. Visitors, relatives were entertained. Carolers came, little dancing girls came, little boys in masquerades came; they were all shown appreciation with money.

Christmas Naija style is the bomb. If you haven’t experienced it, you should because it does good things to the soul. Sweet memories.

FROM NAIRALAND. COM

I’m sorry you seem to think that I was giving a poor picture of Africa. As I tried to explain in the post, I think American Christmas is excessive and extravagant, and I have no problem with the way it’s celebrated in Jos.