THERE is something unique about Christmas. Its endemic enigma I mean. Its allure, mystifying and imponderable in its cryptic puzzle. A riddle befuddling cognitive discernment, ranking not only as the most celebrated but also most fantasized across the global world. To date, it stands out as a grand celebrative fiesta, attracting the greatest number of writers of elevated all-time acclaim who at one time or the other had not only written but fantasised on a remarkably elaborate proportion on the annual grand event. In this regard, I remember “Christmas Carol” a remarkably astounding magnum opus by the legendary Charles Dickens which I read for my G.C.E. in the 70s. Somewhat difficult though, I will not hesitate to recommend it to any sincere seeker of knowledge, for its expostulatory graphic depth on Xmas as celebrated in the contemporary London of his era. On the same note, we would also remember Ebenezar Obey’s locus classicus: “Ninu Odun Ti Nbe Laiye….” hitting the waves around the early 70s and became an instantaneous chart-burster, caressing the soul in an emotional roller-coaster, in an ever-increasing stir beyond words to express, even till today.
As a drunkard under the influence of wine, so is the mass of humanity helpless under the Xmas spell. It takes just the very moment of September in the shifting quicks and of the data calendar – now universally referenced as the beginning of the ember months. The heavens command this spell and the rest of humanity like drunkards temulent with wine, are bedazzled by the celebrative opium of the momentous arrival of the eagerly expected D-Day, four months or there-about to the maturative count-down to zero-point. In its trail follows a frenzy of heightened expectations; wild dreams on the esoteric art, if possible, to command the paradisial bliss of the heavenly, to unseat from its celestial habitat above for momentary temporal existence on the earthly divide, for the festive mallemaroking of the advent of the birth of Christ, maximised on their individual Island of celebration. The euphoric contagion, in its untamed frenzy, balloon beyond the heavens. Activities acquire an intensely phenomenal frequency as the eerie lullaby of the Xmas carol caresses the air, seizing the psyche in a fit of rapture, as xmas pyrotechnics (bangers)lighten the heavens, titillating the festive emotion as preamble appetizers to the ultimate celebratory moment of arrival.
During my growing up years in the Igbo-speaking area of the old Eastern region – Aba, Nsuka, Ngwo and Enugu in that order – the tingling tiding of the birth of Christ, the revered savior of mankind, stands out in infinitely gladsome proportion and remarkably astounding impact, easily as the greatest narrative ever to have greeted my impressionable infantile mind. Going down the mist of distant memory, I remember as if it were just yesterday, those happy days of childhood. The golden age of innocence; virgin memory, unaffectedly shorn of the taunting trauma of experiential buffetings; convoluted twists and turns, landmines, valleys and rivers to cross, storms, quakes, fairies, serpents and genius to conquer, amongst a host of militating odds. The mammoth convergence of the heavenly hosts in that ancient city of Bethlehem, as was first heralded in cognitive tutelage by my class teacher, the mystifying ambiance of divine glory, paradisial pulchritude inexpressible in its grandeur, the luminiferous flash of the star of Bethlehem onto the three esoteric grandmasters in the exotic far east and the legend of their exciting traversal all the excruciating distance to Bethlehem, through the guiding luminescence of the mystery star.
Irrepressible were all these, to my impressionable juvenal mind many decades back at St. Mary’s Primary School Ngwo, where I commenced my primary education, having previously lived in Aba and Nsukka, though mostly for a year, and few months, successively in each of the places, as dictated by operational dynamics of the concentration of construction works extant at a particular site;my dad being an official of Coast Construction, a British-owned construction company based in Apapa Lagos, before ultimately enlisting with the Nigerian Railways, Enugu, our last port of abode in the annals of our sojourn in the old eastern region, until the seismic political eruption occasioned by the rapacious ogre of massive killings between the Igbos and Hausas,which led a horrified Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu,the then military governor of Eastern region,to advise via a radio broadcast that non-Igbos living in the east should leave as quickly as possible, as the situation had degenerated to the extent that he could no longer be able to assure our inviolable safety.
At Ngwo, in those halcyon days of yore, we enjoyed warm family relationship with Chief C. C. Onoh, father of Bianca-Onoh Odumegwu Ojukwu and later Executive Governor of Anambra State – barely for three months, before the Buhari- Idiagbon coup. He knew us all one-on-one, just as we knew them in intriguingly familiar details up to one Igbira woman, from the present Kogi State, whom my parents often used to mention whenever the discussion of the Onohs came up on sheer spontaneous happenstance, decades after our relocation to Lagos, and even later at Ede, his maternal place of ancestry where he eventually retired to, with my beloved Mum, whenever I visited from my base in Lagos – as we reminisced on the good old days.
As a precocious little child, I remember the Christmas celebration of those memorable days in Ngwoland, at a period when this glorious land of the wawas, so to say, was extant in the virgin beauty of its primordial rustic innocence. I remember our residence then owned by a younger brother of C.C. Onoh, whose name I cannot readily remember for now. Our home in those festive moments, was often the converging hub of the hosts of Coast Construction workers, where my Dad was an official. I remember the customary saturnalian frenzy, with hilarious chit-chats, melodious tunes from the rudimentary vibes of the local gramophone, and hearty gigs, at which no less than the very god Baachus itself would often preside with unquestionable dominion. Hmmm! I also remember the culinary delicacies of rice, complemented with special stew “peculiarly out of this world”, with pieces of chicken, only special to the festering fever of festivities prevalently extant on the day.
Not to be left out, were the evocative rendition of the seasonal xmas carol with spirited thrills and frills, particularly at Saint Mary’s Church; the unfettered celebration of Xmas pyrotechnics (bangers)and the sensational shooting spree amongst my mates, with our customised little guns, and the great world of excitement, including the heightened spates of visitations and the phenomenal exudation of brotherly affection and goodwill.
Specially deserving of mention on this note of visitation, was my illustrious grand uncle, and immensely revered father, Pa Raji Ayoola Adeleke, a Professional Staff Nurse, fiery union leader in the Enugu labor sector and grandfather of the one and only David Adeleke (aka Davido)
the rave musical icon, who apart from being a regular fixture at our abode in Ngwo, would forsake the celebratory impulse of communion with his family – actuated by a familial bond of common progeny from Edeland – our maternal ancestry, where Pa Adeleke also hailed from – to traverse all the distance from Enugu,a vortex of vigorous social excitement and leading hub of entertainment, where things were really happening, to celebrate with us in Ngwo. What an impressive show of familial kindredship?
We became closer in reciprocal interactive visitations in the later event of our departure from Ngwo to Enugu, following my father’s new shift of employment with Nigeria Railways, Enugu. I remember his wife, mummy Nnenna, their children Deji, Tunji and their elder sister, Anti Iyabo, a nurse.
In this regard,I recall with fond memory, in attesting to our intimate familial closeness that when Baba (Pa.Raji Ayoola Adeleke) opened their newly built house in Ilukwe, Enugu, my Dad, Mum and sibling could not but stay back for an extra three days, after the house warming ceremony that all guests had left. Such was the familial kindredship bonding us with this illustrious fellow kinsman of ours in Edeland, our maternal land of ancestry, where my Dad, an Iwo-born prince, was born and grew up together as far back as early infancy with Pa Raji Adeleke – and also passed on and buried in the same Edeland where he had earlier relocated, from his Lagos base, following his retirement from Nigeria Railways. Coming back to Ngwoland, personally from my narrow cognitive confine as a child, Xmas mallemaroking in that land of the illustrious C.C.Onoh
in those days, could only lend in apt comparison with the annual masquerade festival in that land. Usually at that eventful dance of the masquerade,
Onoh, the strongman of Ngwoland, stupendously wealthy, at least by the prevailing standard of that time, and a British-trained lawyer, would discard elite paraphernalia of all hues to level up with fellow kinfolk at the Afiosu market, the theatre of the masquerade and the teeming mass of excited spectators.
As of course to be expected, Onoh often actively in their midst, as a keen cultural purveyor, would often command in exceedingly cynosural wattage, the indisputable center of attraction. Inspiring a sacerdotal aura on the epic theater of the masquerade, was this immensely popular local market, and a significant reference point in the cultural heritage of the ancient town whose trade-mark as a gravitational hub of vultures often hovering around the market space, accentuated its existential age-long antiquity, to confer a mythical aura of a sort, which often in its own way, would rub off in added awe, on the cultural convergence of the masquerade, often holding within the local market space.
As it would turn out, Enugu, the bustling and ever-bubbling vortex of social excitement would ignite the climax of my blissful Xmas experience. Our relocation to the strategic coal city, the then capital of the old eastern region was indeed a most cherished experience as it exposed us to a wider interactive embrace with the Yoruba community in Enugu,quite unlike Aba, at which about the only couple we knew were one Macaulay, son of the legendary Herbert Heelas Macaulay and his wife, and Nsukka, where the only fellow Yorubas we knew, were one Mr.Martins care-taker of houses of the Great Zik, built-in Nsukka, and my esteemed uncle, Pa Adeniran Akintaro, who before his later relocation to Lagos, years before us, then lived the next street away from us, with his friend, Pa Jimoh, a native of Offa.
It was in Enugu,that my beloved Mum started attending the Cherubim and Seraphim Church of Mummy Nnenna Adeleke. I remember a particular occasion when I dramatically fell sick, with no symptomatic notification. It was at the church healing sanatorium I took recourse. It was also at the same church that my elder brother, then fifteen years old or there-about, was warned to be fore-armed against an incident fore-seen to happen in the year futuristically co-eval with his twenty-eight years of age. Prophetically this precisely came to happen, during his later sojourn in Ibadan, albeit luckily, in a merciful turn expressing the unfailing Grace of Divine providence. The solidarous sense of unity then extant among the Yoruba community in Enuguland in those days was remarkably inspiring, acquiring on a delectably pleasant note, a most sublime expression, especially on ceremonial Christmas fiestas. Looking back today several decades after, it would seem as if this unique global fiesta was by teleological determinism of a sort, specifically designed, solely for this legendary coal city.
Expressed in other words, it is doubtful whether Enuguland was not what God had in mind, that prompted him to implant xmas on the earthly canvas.
If you were ever a privileged partaker of Xmas in its effervescent glee, glitz and gracioso as then extant in Enugu, good luck.But if not, too bad.And worse still, that you may not have known what you had missed.
Today, this fore-most ecumenical fiesta of global Christendom – talking of the progressive decadence of the particular Nigerian experience, would seem to be “going the way of all mortals”. “Dying”, if one could borrow that seriocomic metaphor in literary personification.
To be sure, Xmas in the local Nigerian clime has lost its romantic allure; its primeval social excitement and esctatic grip of those good old days.
Gone are those days when it was “an abomination” for an average Igbo man, provided not a bastard, to celebrate Xmas outside their primordial geo-political enclave. The consuming Christmas fever which in the similitude of a herd instinct, would often destinate them to the sanctuary of their ancestoral home stead for the festive razzmatazz has plunged into a lamentable atrophy, not alone for the surface-logic adducement of insecurity often readily bandied, but also the added burden of existential survival arising from the suffocating macro-economic headwind.
Sartorial and culinary niceties, of befittingly resplendent best wears and pleasant best of dishes, intensely yearned, with nightmarish festive obsession, long before the very D-Day, the event proper is fastly receding from the radar of grandiloquent expectancy, faced with the supervening grip of poverty. The usual
staple ritual of Santa Claus visitation, pyrotechnical preponderance of bangers and the ordinarily easy-to-come-by inspirational heavenly vibes of Xmas Carol with its customary seasonal ubiquity – these and more are exquisite festive features of those good old days, fast receding into the limbo.
The good old days elude the grip of times.
Our paradise in fleet-span vapor o’er air
Pray! Can we regain our paradise?
Treasured age of golden memory
(personally composed)
- Johnson is a writer and journalist.
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