Christmas in Nene's House

Nene, my paternal grandmother, spoilt us with coconut rice. It was her Christmas delicacy. Coconut rice with canned Geisha sat very well with her. With Bychance (what a name!) ever on hand to regale us with stories of Christmas days gone by, the scene was always set for every Christmas celebration.

On the eve of Christmas and the New Year, we would spend the night shooting locally made fireworks with carbide smoked and pressured in empty cans. The loud shots and booms would rend Nene’s compound until, unable to take it anymore, she would yell for us to get indoors and sleep.

Then Christmas and New Year days would arrive. The celebrations would kick off in earnest with an oversized helping of Nene’s coconut rice. Thereafter, we would deck ourselves up in our never-before-worn Christmas dresses and shoes and take the town and neighbouring villages apart, receiving cash gifts from every home we visited, and satiating our palates with more rice and stew until the flesh under our eyes were swollen overnight. How that happened remains a subject for enquiry by dietitians motivated enough to study the phenomenon. Usually, the day following Christmas or New Year, we kept a permanent appointment with the toilet as our stomachs revolted against the assault of the previous day.

There was so much walking to do on these special days. We would walk many miles until our feet were sore from wearing our new shoes for the first time. We usually returned home barefooted, holding our shoes. Our clothes and shoes had to be brand new and unused on Christmas day otherwise the day would lose its significance. That made the new shoes with the long distances we walked in them a very hazardous endeavour.

We would trek to Okwedjeba to watch the annual Kpotigboti masquerade dance. The masquerades painted themselves charcoal-black and shuffled around like zombies, making kids scurry away from them in fright. Then we would return for the annual masquerade festival in Adeje, a tourists’ delight that drew visitors from far and near. How can I forget Christmas in Nene’s house?

Christmas and New Year celebrations in our childhood days provided unequalled excitement. We always counted down the days to Christmas with great anticipation. But things are different now. There appears to be nothing special to be associated with Christmas and New Year celebrations these days, other than going to Church and occasionally getting the children to visit an increasingly impoverished Santa Claus. The latter-day sights and sounds of Christmas and New Year have become what I call holiday traumas in a poem I wrote on the eve of Christmas in 2013:

Holiday Traumas

I dislike Christmas and New Year days for their excessive quietness, indoorness, and TV watching. ‘Tis not how it was in the days of yore. The once bustling city looks like it is having its worst day in a war; the streets are deserted, like snipers are everywhere. And the war feeling is made real by shots from knockouts and firecrackers that pierce the silence like crazy Kalashnikovs. It is a holiday trauma!

I dislike Christmas and New Year for bringing on us the fat and calories we spend the rest of the year burning. What with the much eating, drinking, and idle revelling! Yet we mostly eat, not from hunger, but to please someone and their cooking. It is a holiday trauma!

I dislike Christmas and New Year for bringing on the terrible twenty-one-day church fasting in January. A body adjusted to much eating and drinking for two weeks must re-train to go the opposite way. And for twenty-one days! Gosh, the body takes a beating. It is a holiday trauma!

I dislike Christmas and New Year for piling refuse and garbage on our streets for days. ‘Tis as if we just can't refuse the refuse. Everywhere stinks! It is a holiday trauma!

I dislike Christmas and New Year for emptying our pockets and making January the longest month. Everyone is broke, yet payday leap-frogs like a terrible mirage. It is a holiday trauma!

I dislike Christmas and New Year for making our trousers too tight in January. All the junk has quickly settled at our waists. ‘Tis tough to button the jeans. Ouch! The iron buttons break the fingers as we try to press the fat back. And when we button up, the layers of fat droop in the front and on the sides, and threaten to cover the belt. Not to worry—twenty-one days is coming. It is just another holiday trauma!

Although Christmas was elaborately celebrated in Nene’s house, it bore no Christian significance of any kind. Christmas was celebrated more for its rice eating and merriment than a celebration of the Saviour of mankind. That indeed appears to be what still drives today’s Christmas celebration.

Read more about Nene, this unique grandmother, in the story "Golden Grandmother" told in my book Laughing Over Serious Matters. Get it from my

website

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