I hate everything about it. It wasn’t always this way. In fact I can vividly recall the intense excitement that began with the beaming colored bulbs highlighting the living room, and providing the pathway to the dangling Christmas cards, and shimmering garlands — paying homage to the tree of life that dutifully sprawls with splendor.
When you grow up in a Nigerian household; with the extra booster of being an Igbo girl with God-fearing relatives, “the holidays” don’t represent the handful of times a year when you can blissfully request gadgets that will increase your chances of being Insta-worthy just in time for the New Year.
Christmastime was “Jesus time,” with all the biblical fare that instructs believers to sing classic hymns with the joyous gratitude for how such a blessed birth is enough incentive to be celebratory.
I was never able to summon any organic tendencies towards the skillful impregnation of the Virgin Mary under the direction of Almighty God, but I was able to garner the necessary reverence applicable to the “time of year” when goodwill towards men actually meant something.
There’s also the culture of communion that revolves around the specialness of engagement that isn’t regulated to mini-screens that upload what isn’t there.
