Column
Bitter Pills
By Des Wilson
African Christmas
Give me
An African Christmas
We’ll spend it together
In Peace and Love
To heal our land
Ed Jordan, Lyrics of song African Christmas (2011)
It seems we are at the beginning of a new era, or the end of an epoch. Strange and happenstance events come to play and finger our memories like the experience of malaria-induced dreams. Could this be the same Nigeria that I knew when I was growing up?
We have come a long way from the early days of our contact with European seafarers and adventurers who had both territorial and commercial interests interlaced with a coy religious interest. And having conquered the people through guile with the triple G heritage of Gold, God and Glory, they set out to seduce and despoil our land.
Africa is a celebratory and festive continent when it comes to marking events whether national, subnational, local or family. It is hard to find any setting where people are individualistic except in negative dispositions such as crimes. That is why marriages, funerals, childbirths, awards and festivals involve the whole community of humans in any part of Africa.
Even European Christmas was marked as a communal festival of the pagan bacchanal which the early Christian leaders adopted as a way of wooing the pagan worshippers into Christianity. This spiritual and cultural metamorphosis is still one of the reasons some extreme Christian denominations still reject today’s Christmas celebrations, apart from the reasons, by some, that Christ did not enjoin Christians to mark his birthday.
Of course it is nonsensical to expect that Christ who was interested in a rather austere solemnity like the Lenten observances of Christians, would have told his apostles to celebrate his birthday. If He had even said it some would have likened Him to a hedonist. I don’t know whether this part of the argument has ever occurred to the dissenters who behave like conscientious objectors.
In Africa, it is a common practice that though you may be just a family, you welcome your new born child with some kind of public celebration. Think about those couples who laboured for years to have a child, and by some divine intervention a child is born. Do you think this birth will be marked in secret with silent pouring of libation rather than the genial ululation accompanying an answered prayer? In the case of Christians, this was a child that had been prophesied and announced as the saviour of the world.
But the celebration of childbirth in Africa, is marked by wide participation of members of the community. Remember, our children are known to be the gifts from our Creator and held to be so until they deviate from community standards and norms. Yet it must be noted that African birth celebrations were not individualistic and are still not. Today, our Christmas celebrations have become something else. It is easily the reason for the disruption of family peace. Husbands, wives and children and even distant relations see it as an event that one has to beg, steal or commit any crime that will ensure that Christmas clothes, shoes, rice, chickens, yam with large smoked fish, and home decors must form part of the accompaniment to a successful celebration of the birth of our Lord. Very little attention is paid to the spiritual content of this event. In fact, a pastor that spends more than thirty minutes sermonising on Christmas would almost become like the proverbial padre whose church janitor had to hand him the key of the church because he was the last worshipper left while the padre was unleashing his venom against Satan. That day is not the day for reverberating invectives against the devil who has continued to keep us company even when we have declared war against him.
My advice to all who have lost faith in their country, state, community or family is that they should rejoice. If indeed they are Christians, they should know that the agency of salvation, redemption and joy, is here.
As most Christians know, this birth celebration has not only become too individualistic, materialistic, and spiritually empty, as many promoters of the events focus more on the self and the commercial prospects which have made Christmas a world business, as they have lost their family-based cultural integrity. We are now engaged in western cultural exhibitionism devoid of communal impact and fellow feeling.
There was a time when we fused our genial, genteel and accommodating cultural practices in the celebration of Christmas, for this feast was meant to be a celebration of love. Quite similar to the western practices encapsulated in providing gifts in boxes to our friends and neighbours, was our practice of sharing food and other gift items at Christmas. This was done on the same day as Christmas.
The poor, whom Christ said, would always be with us, were not left out and they hardly felt left out during the celebration. The new culture of keeping up with the Joneses is something that crept into our society through our mindless embrace of western culture.
Give me an African Christmas so that we can have our lives back again. This return to our indigenous communal practices which focus on loyalty, and commitment to the interests of all the people in a community rather than a segregationist approach which celebrates the cult of the individual. We can bring back sanity to the celebration of Christmas by bringing Christ into the spiritual aspect of the celebration of the body and blood of Christ as a theme of the season, rather than place too much emphasis on the ephemeral physical displays of wealth and inanities. What we do now is nothing but Christmas selfies.
African Christmas celebrates our heritage, unity, culture, exchange of gifts, music and dancing, visits, slaughter of animals and birds, feasting, carols, and worship in various worship places. In the past we had knockouts and bangers and fireworks. The civil war, and now terrorism in various places, have led the security forces to ban these except when organised in identified places instead of the indiscriminate displays sometimes employed by truculent youths against motorists. These activities often tee off into the New Year festivities.
At Christmas we often give our homes a new look to welcome the new baby. Many homes are decorated with flowers, tree plants and Christmas light. Pinterest offers us a variety of African Christmas decors *** mud houses are often ‘repainted’ with fresh brownish mud with charcoal to mark beautiful edges around the walls. Some old thatch mats are often replaced. As children we knew joy was around the corner when we saw the white egrets peacefully accompanying cattle like personal assistants in today’s governance structures.
