A Christmas Tale of Memory, Merriment, and Meaning

Today is Christmas! the grandest day in the Christian calendar; a day that arrives bearing both sacred stillness and magnificent commotion. From the early-morning hymns rising from tin-roofed churches to the joyous clatter of plates in family compounds by midday, Christmas in Kenya has never been merely a date. It is an event, a pilgrimage, a performance, and, by quiet national consensus, the most expensive day of the year.

From my childhood, Christmas in my family and community was observed with almost liturgical extravagance. New clothes were purchased, sometimes weeks in advance, guarded jealously in wardrobes and only revealed on Christmas morning. They were worn with the solemn dignity of a coronation. The finest food was prepared, relatives travelled from towns and cities, and those returning to the rural homes seized the annual opportunity to demonstrate just how advanced life in town had made them. Some arrived bearing bottles of mineral water, careful not to be mistaken for people who still drank from the wells their mothers once drew from with bare hands and untroubled hearts.

Christmas was also the season of hopeful negotiations for the young and recently graduated. Family gatherings became informal employment bureaux, where one sought audience with the well-placed uncle, often employed by a parastatal, a multinational, or a well-funded NGO, who, the previous Christmas, had promised to “see what can be done.” Christmas, after all, is a season of faith, and faith is sustained by promises.

Village shopkeepers prepared for Christmas like generals for battle. Balloons, biscuits, sweets, and cooking fat disappeared from shelves as if by divine rapture. Butchers worked at a tempo unknown to ordinary months, while the youth pursued their own interpretations of festivity through busaa, muratina, mnazi or any other local liqour depending with the region, each drink narrating its own story of culture, courage, and youthful defiance.

The faithful gathered in churches in the morning, dressed in their Sunday best, though often with one eye on the clock and hearts already drifting toward the simmering pots back home. Worship was sincere, the sermons heartfelt, but appetizing enticement of delicacies awaiting at home, as ever, was persuasive.

Christmas was also the season of romance revisited. Town boys, now proudly “men of means”, returned to the village to retrace old love stories, searching for the girls who once occupied their dreams and disrupted their concentration in class. Many were now accomplished women and mothers, their laughter richer and their lives fuller. Nostalgia walked hand in hand with humour, and sometimes with gentle regret.

Cars were hired not merely for transport, but for display. Only days ago, traffic along the Nairobi–Nakuru highway was so heavy that Kenyans jokingly christened it The Great Luhya Migration, turning a vital economic artery into a long, patient parking lot as families journeyed home for Christmas.

For many households, chapati or chapo, as it is affectionately known, was the undisputed centrepiece of the Christmas table. I am told that in some homes, notices were boldly written at the gate: Ubwa Kali (Beware of Dogs) or Tumehama (We have moved), cleverly discouraging neighbours who might otherwise appear uninvited at the unmistakable scent of frying dough. Still, most compounds betrayed themselves anyway, wrapped in the aroma of celebration. In my day, we drank Treetop (Mai Ma Machungwa) later replaced by bottled sodas. Today, even sodas are sold out in most village shops before noon.

Trading centres deep in the countryside came alive, and cash circulated with unprecedented enthusiasm. I remember an uncle who never attended Christmas lunch without a sachet of Eno tucked discreetly into his pocket, his personal insurance against the excesses that Christmas encourages without apology.

And then, gradually, the fires fizzled and the embers cooled. Families prepared to return to their ordinary lives. City guests packed sugarcane, arrowroots, pumpkins, dry and green maize, milk, bananas, and sometimes even live kienyenji chickens, tokens of rural abundance, to take back to their urban dwellings.

Today, as I join my family in Nyeri County for Christmas celebrations, I am reminded that while times change, the essence endures. My five-year-old daughter stands in wide-eyed wonder at the sight of cows and goats, while my sons remain mesmerised by the rolling hills, puzzled by how people cross steep valleys simply to go to the shop. They cannot yet comprehend how their mother once crossed those very valleys twice each day throughout her schooling, without complaint, without complaint, and without complaint.

Christmas is beautiful. Though it comes but once a year, it delivers joy in generous measure. Yet as we slaughter goats, peel Irish potatoes, shell green peas, roast nyama choma, prepare chapati, and gather as families and communities, let us pause.

Let us remember that Christmas is not merely about abundance, but about incarnation.

For at its heart, Christmas is the story of God choosing humility over power, simplicity over splendour, and love over force. The Christ child was not born into wealth, comfort, or ceremony, but into vulnerability, laid in a manger, welcomed by shepherds, and announced not to kings, but to the humble.

As we share our meals and laughter, may we also share kindness with the forgotten, generosity with the needy, and forgiveness with one another. May our celebrations reflect not only full tables, but full hearts; not only joy, but grace; and not only tradition, but Christ Himself.

For as Scripture reminds us: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder.”

May this Christmas renew our faith, restore our compassion, and remind us that Emmanuel, God with us, still walks among us.

Merry Christmas, and may the peace of Christ dwell richly in our homes.