Christmas Day
It’s Christmas morning, and I woke up with a severe cold. On top of that, I have a migraine that feels like it is threatening to explode my head. The house feels terribly dry as the harmattan creeps in. the day felt like any ordinary day
This morning as I got into the shower, I noticed the rooster crowing like it had an instinct that today was Christmas. Every “COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!” seemed like a festive alarm, reminding the entire yard to wake up and celebrate, whether we wanted to or not. By the fifth round, I was half convinced it had donned a tiny Santa hat in secret.
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As I stepped out of the shower, I almost tripped over one of my nephew’s stuffed toys. I wondered how it had ended up at the edge of the bathroom door. I then turned on my data, and notifications from WhatsApp and other social media platforms began to trickle in.
As a Christian, today is the day I was supposed to go to church and listen to the sermon of the festive season. For some reason, this year felt different; I had a pit in my stomach which also refused to go away. It’s Christmas Day, but it felt like everything was going left for me instead of right.
I finished dressing up and got down to have my breakfast. I took in some wheat pudding and proceeded to respond to messages and calls. As I was doing that, my sweet cousin peeked in at the door bearing gifts. She had just arrived from school for a short festive break.
We began talking about how ghostly Christmas felt, how inactive and almost dead the day seemed. There were no Christmas decorations, and there had not been any for years now. Without them, the season passed like any other day, stripped of its colour and excitement. There was no familiar rush, no anticipation in the air, just a quiet stillness that felt heavier than usual. She kept urging me to go out with her to fix our nails and take better care of our hair, something like a simple girls’ outing to force a little cheer into the day. I was not interested and could not bring myself to pretend otherwise, so I gave her the go-ahead to go on without me.
Left alone, the house felt even quieter, the kind of silence that makes you aware of your own thoughts. I sat with the strange mood of the season, wondering when celebration had started to feel like obligation. Outside, as if determined to disagree with the stillness of it all, the rooster crowed again, loud and relentless, announcing a Christmas it seemed far more convinced about than the rest of us.
