It is that time of the year when many people in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa travel upcountry to commune with family for Christmas festivities. And do not be fooled by the fact that the times are hard and January – which we have since christened the 90-day Njaanuary – is around the corner with its scary demands for school fees and other payables. Money or no money, man is a creature of habit and so expect bus and matatu terminuses to be chock-full and clogged with humanity, fares hiked and people travelling, in some cases with heavy households stacked on bus rooftops. Money or no money, petrol stations, gift shops and other merchants of Christmas-related wares will be doing roaring business, probably more business than bookshops, the school booklists notwithstanding.
I am not an innocent observer in this matter. By the time you read this, I will probably be away in the land of Ndega and Nthaara, pouring libations in honour of my Embu ancestors. Now, Ndega and Nthaara, like the biblical Adam and Eve, are the mythical parents of the Aembu people, as documented by historian and scholar Prof Mwaniki Kabeca (GBHS) and whose artistic ways are equally ably unpacked by Prof Ciarunji Chesaina, she who gave us The Oral Literature of Embu and Mbeere and The Oral Literature of the Kalenjin.
Indeed, each major community in Africa and elsewhere has some mythical story of origin or other. For me, these myths are not idle stories. They are evidence of the endless human search for meaning in life. They connect us to what Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka would call the drama of the gods. These tales invariably mirror a people’s history and spiritual roots. In Africa, rather ironically, Christmas is a tale of two worlds. There is the colonial world and the world of our ancestral roots.
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The colonial roots of Christmas are well known, as the day reached us by way of missionaries from Europe, who brought Christianity to us. In Europe, the season has its roots in a fusion of early Christian theology and much older pagan winter festivals. Long before Christianity, communities across the Roman world and northern Europe marked the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night, with feasts celebrating the return of light. The Romans observed Saturnalia, a midwinter festival of gift-giving, role reversals and public merriment, while in northern Europe, Germanic and Norse peoples celebrated Yule, lighting fires and decorating homes with evergreens as symbols of life enduring through winter. When Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, Church leaders gradually aligned the celebration of the birth of Jesus with these existing festivals, fixing December 25 as Christmas by the 4th century, partly to ease conversion and give Christian meaning to familiar seasonal rituals.
Over the medieval period, Christmas in Europe became firmly established as both a religious and communal festival, centred on church services, feasting and charity to the poor. Practices such as the Christmas Mass, nativity scenes, carol singing and the twelve days of Christmas developed or were formalised during this time. Later, the Protestant Reformation reshaped the holiday in parts of Europe. Some reformers, as is well documented, downplayed or even banned Christmas as a Catholic excess, while others refocused it on scripture and family devotion. By the 18th and 19th centuries, Christmas was revived and reshaped again, especially in Britain and Germany, with an emphasis on domestic celebration, children and gift-giving.
There is a literary angle too, as the moral renewal associated with Christmas was popularised by literary works such as Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843). There have also been popular literary subversions of the season, such as T.S. Eliot’s classic poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’ (1927), which adds a twist to the story of the three wise men who saw a star in the East signifying the birth of Christ. The poem casts the journey to Bethlehem as cold, arduous and exhausting.
William Butler Yeats’s poem, ‘The Second Coming’, published in 1920, is another masterclass in literary subversion. It turns the ‘second coming’ from the expectation that Christ will return to judge us according to our deeds into the arrival of a sphinx-like creature from spiritus mundi, which awes the reader with dread. This literary trope is not meant to negate the spirit of Christianity, but rather to criticise the excesses we have heaped on what should be a call to humility, charity and service to humanity, turning it instead into a celebration of consumerism and greed.
For me, the origin of Christmas is not the point. It is the season’s positive side that I want to focus on this time. It is a time to share with those who have little, to be one with one’s people and to reflect on our lives and purpose. Think about it. There are many Kenyans who never set foot in their villages the whole year, barring a major clan event, but will honour the ritual of travelling home to commune with the world of their ancestors. That is a great thing!
Unfortunately, Christmas also reveals the worst in some of us. Some matatu drivers are tempted to overtake around blind corners to create an extra return trip and make an overnight windfall. They hike fares, pack people into their vehicles like sardines, secure in the belief that all it costs to get away with it is a Sh200 handshake at roadblocks. I have explored this matter in a novella targeting the youth, The Daredevil Rider, but this is not about me and my works.
Private car owners too tend to speed, as if the village may move away if they do not get there on time. Others drink copious amounts of alcohol and hit the road, with disastrous results in terms of road carnage. Yet others, instead of sharing with the poor, turn Christmas into a time to show off wealth, sometimes sparking clan rivalry. You must have seen those online memes calling out city people who drive huge cars to the village, slaughter every chicken in sight and want to travel back with cars sagging under loads of farm produce. Yet all they carried home, apart from their expensive clothes and scents, were a few packets of wheat flour, a few litres of cooking oil and a few kilos of sugar. The village people are now demanding fairness and reciprocity.
Bad manners aside, buy someone a good book this season, not just bottles of alcohol. While at it, have a Meeeerry Christmas!
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By Henry Munene