Growing up, no day ever competed with Christmas. Maybe birthdays would have been the greatest but they didn’t exist. Nobody gave a damn about the day they were born. It’s just the advent of social media that we guys from the village are reminded that it’s our birthdays. And then people we don’t know wish us a happy one, and life goes on. After all it’s just an anniversary. For that matter we looked forward to Christmas, to celebrate not only the birth of the messiah but also birthdays.

Back to Christmas. The compound would be swept clean and all trash [plastics, animal dung, torn clothes and dry leaves] would be heaped somewhere in the compound and set ablaze a day before Christmas. The house would be cleaned, mud-walled ones smeared with fresh clay and patterns made. Then the village would be ready to welcome the day Jesus Christ was born.

We would scrub ourselves clean without being threatened with a cane. When done we’d rush to ask our mothers if we had done it well. We had to be spotlessly clean, you know. The birth of Jesus deserved cleanliness.

Then would slip into our brand new clothes. These clothes were bought two months to Christmas. Some parents were foresighted; they knew the price of clothes would be hiked by rogue traders as the Christmas day approached. And that was tortuous for us. We’d look at them admiringly, sometimes wearing them when our parents were not around. At long last, the day would come, and we joyfully donned them and pranced around the village like our parents owned oil wells.

The food. We wouldn’t accept anything short of chapatti, rice and meat. On some occasions, where the Uchumi was bad, we’d settle for chapatti and tea. Chapatti was more important than anything. Sometimes there will be soda, plenty of them. We’d drink for three days if neighbors never made impromptu visits.

Fast forward the spirit of Christmas has lost its meaning. First of all, it’s a day you aren’t working, if you are lucky, you have a one-week leave. And free booze. It’s a day to lose all inhibitions if only for a while.