“Wakey wakey! It’s Christmas!” This is a line from my all time favorite movie Home Alone, my first encounter with white Christmas😂. My own reality of Christmas, while growing up, was nothing of the sort.

Mine was a family musical, as far back as I can remember. My large family would gather in our mud lelwapa, immaculately decorated by a gifted Motswana woman and that would be my mother. If you have never seen a traditional Setswana lelwapa, you should know it’s a breathtaking piece of art, the finish is usually colourful based on the soil used, complete with beautiful drawings. Beats me why I never learnt that art🤔. I digress.

Well, Christmas has different meanings to different people. To some it’s a holiday to have a fun and be merry, to some a time to be with family;a time for sharing and for caring, to others it is a season to remember the birth of Jesus Christ. I belong to the latter. My father ensured I did. On the eve of Christmas our family would sing hymns and share scriptures until midnight. My family is musically gifted, if I say so myself😆. My father had a nice velvety tenor and he would dance as if he didn’t have a pain in his body. It was a spectacle and today as I reminisce, I’m filled with love and a longing for that once close knit family, that warmth and completeness before death and other misfortunes robbed us. At midnight, we would look up to the sky. Apparently there was a sign in the skies to signal the birth of the lamb. I laugh over that now, I don’t quite remember seeing anything but I trusted my father so there had to be something.

We would then go to sleep but still wake up early to cook up a storm.Waking up late at home was an offense punishable by a few strokes and/or tongue lashing. We would listen to Christmas songs on radio and dance away. One Christmas my brother had to work so we tuned in to his programme on radio. To our delight, he dedicated the programme to us. You should have seen our grins when he called out our names, one by one. Such are my sweet memories of Christmas 😁.

As a teenager I would abandon the family culture and spend Christmas with church mates away from my country. This was met with hostility at home to the extent that I secretly dreaded Christmas time. As the years went by, my family would warm up to that idea and although it was always hard to part.

As a married adult I cannot confidently say that I have a Christmas culture. It is usually more about how we will divide the time between our two families, who live miles apart. I know to some people it seems like a natural transition but more than a decade into marriage, I still wish there was another way🤦🏾‍♀️.

This year, however, promises to be memorable 😉.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas 🎄