Yeah! Christmas is here again and gone!
It’s a time for joy and celebrations, for soberness and reflections, for wining and dining, for constipation and indigestion, and for some group, for too much booze and nasty hangovers.

I remember when we were little, Christmas just won’t come soon enough. The moment the harmattan haze begin to appear sometimes as early as late September or October, often quickly followed by the dust and cold, we painstakingly began our countdown to Christmas and every now and again sneak to look at our Christmas outfits often carefully kept away in some supposedly hidden place by mum with a stern warning not to look for them or touch them.

Christmas finally came and for us kids, the eating start on the eve of Christmas when the goat, chickens and turkeys are being prepared. We gorge ourselves all we can and the next 12 to 8 ours before daybreak on Christmas day is like another eternity. Finally, morning comes and we get a chance to put on our new cloths and shoes. The shoes are often too tight and our dresses a little tight or short; perhaps because there were bought a month or two earlier to avoid price hike that goes with Christmas. Off we go off to the neighbors’ house where we are offered more food and drinks. We’d accept, try to eat a little rice and definitely the meat or chicken and sodas which were/are known as ‘minerals’, many times get some small cash gift and off to the next neighbor we go. Later we would team up with our little friends and continue our visitations together, sometimes going to the zoo, cinemas or some parks to see ‘father Christmas’. There were masquerades called ‘kwa hi’ that comes out later in the afternoon and move from street corners to street corners and from house to house performing and entertaining crowds that will always gathers to watch and often follow the troupe to the next place they would play and dance. Ours was a society with little or no awareness of class, religious or tribal differences.

It was usually a very merry and fun filled day by the end of which most of us kids end up exhausted and woke up with indigestion. Our bellies bloated and giving up foul smelling gas each time we fart or belch. Mum would be very upset while she looks for remedies to fix us again. Thing is that Christmas always seem to come and go too soon leaving us with another long wait for the next Christmas and the not too thrilling realization that school was a reopening in the new year.

I guess we all have our fun childhood memories of those innocent years. It’s an honor and a privilege given by the Most High to celebrate another Christmas, reminisce on those memories and the feeling of nostalgias they brings.
Christmas is a beautiful season of joy and peace, so strong it’s in the air everywhere and there is nothing the devil or his agents including terrorist can do about it.

I wish you a merry Christmas, all they joy of the season and a prosperous new year ahead.


http://bluestocker.com/childhood-memories-christmas/