Christmas, popularly and colloquially referred to as “ofara” is one event that is highly referred and celebrated all over the world. Christians the world over celebrate to mark the birth of Jesus Christ, the son of God who was sent to save the world of its sins. The celebration although seemed to have lost its vibes and stems, because of the severe economic impact of the pandemic, a throwback to what it used to be growing up as kids and current adults and young people may be the needed spice to bring a smile on our faces in an otherwise gloomy year. As a kid growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Christmas started with the end of the school year often around the second week of December, results were collected as will serve as an evidence that the kid worked hard during the school year; a good result is guaranteed that new clothes and shoes will be bought, not too good results leaves the kid’s “fate” in the balance while a bad result? It’s a God’s grace thing for you. This unwritten arrangement made the first term examination mostly competitive among the kids. Result collection days was often a day of crazy emotions, different kids with contrasting feelings; some jubilating having passed in flying colours and others sometimes seen crying; no Christmas clothes for me-they often think. This is followed by measurement of feet ritual, often the sweetest.
Our mothers have this way of bringing drama to everything. The 1990s and early 2000s babies will be familiar with this ritual. It involves your mum’s calling you out to come measure your feet to determine your shoe size and ascertain your shoe size. This most times arouses joy in most kids as it’s a sign of good tidings. How our parents ended up buying often oversized shoes (despite the measurements) is a story for another day and should be a course of study in the university. This most times is done together with the Christmas carols and often masquerade parades which shows how the Christian religion and the Traditional religion have so fused together. The carols especially by the adherences of the Catholic faith involved singing and dancing from each member’s house to another, praise songs were sang with the participants appreciated with naira notes as “igba Christmas”. It’s rather funny that the same set of kids will still participate in the masquerade parades and dances…its Christmas and every avenue of enjoyment should be explored. These masquerades parade although attracts some form of punishments from some very zealous Christians (being born in a devote Pentecostal family, these parades attracts corporal punishment from dad). These do not always deter the kids from going back to same parades as kids will always be kids. The highlights of all, is the Christmas day proper. From 1PM that day children are seen all over the place in their colourful Christmas wears and rubber glasses to match walking in groups for what can be termed “Christmas visitation”. This is actually the climax and most enjoyable.
Children in groups visit their loved words in their Christmas best and such visit is appreciated with monetary gifts. Any gift otherwise (especially food) is rejected because “no be wetin carry them”. It’s Christmas and we have eaten in our house. This customary visitation is done till the twilight of evening and continued during the New Year celebrations. It also served as an avenue to show our Township resident cousins around the village. The monies realized will be used for the snapping funny looking photographs that we now look at with smiles and laughs. This life we had then is no longer here, the masquerade parades of the village has been replaced by visits to the Cinemas and other fun seeking places, the visits to relatives and friends has now been replaced by just a video call on Face Time and other social media platforms. Today, Christmas for me and most 1990s guys is now about the travels to the village where we were made to go see the land of out birth and say “thank you” to the parents that gave so much for us.
It involves traveling the bad roads and enduring the dusts that bears testament of the neglect of successive governments and of course the rather joyous welcome from our parent’s and younger ones. The promise of freshly cooked Ofe Ujuju is a plus and for a properly breed Ika man, nothing beats that. This a rather funny year, with many businesses experiencing a downturn due to the pandemic and many job losses, in all of these, we remain grateful for being alive and I do hope that this little journey back to our childhood bring some bit of smiles to your face.
Evans Nwawuefe
