A brown Christmas

When I think about it, I've hardly had any white Christmases. My first one, I guess, was in 2000 in Delaware, and that was just a small dusting of snow Christmas morning as a fluke. (Apparently, they don't often get snow for Christmas.) Most of my Christmases have been brown and dry, even in the States. I'm not complaining or anything. That's how I grew up, so that's "normal" to me.

This year was no different. We're in the midst of the dry, dusty season, harmattan, here in northern Nigeria. In fact, the few days before Christmas, I was wearing long sleeves because it was chilly!! Not cold, mind you, but lower than 70F. (The dust in the air keeps out direct sunlight, so the temps drop.) On Christmas Eve we attended the annual Christmas Eve Service at Hillcrest Chapel, this year conducted by a pastor in my parents' mission. It was a lovely mixture of readings and music, including an outstanding piano-trumpet duet of "The Coventry Carol" with a spoken introduction. I'd never before heard the carol explained, and the music was so poignant as we all remembered Herod slaughtering the children fo Bethleham. Wow! After the service, we got to connect with a few old friends, including my sister's first boyfriend and one of my classmates, whom I hadn't seen since our high school graduation in June 2000.

Christmas morning dawned bright and cheery. I woke up before the boys and baked my mom's famous cinnamon rolls. Then we drank [precious] earl grey tea and opened presents. (Well, Luke opened presents. We mostly just watched.) Luke was especially enthralled by a book about boats and ships from Mom and Dad. It's a pretty nifty book! Then we watched It's a Wonderful Life and afterward took a nap. I got up to make a bean salad and rolls for dinner... Well, the rolls flopped. I'm a baker, sure, but yeast has never been my strong suit. So I had to make some baking powder biscuits instead. (The rolls did eventually rise, and we baked them and ate them, but it was more than a day later!) Our friends Sara and Sunday came over around five to do video Skype with her family in the States, and at six, we went off to our neighbours' for Christmas dinner. We were joined by other neighbours, the Johnstons from Northern Ireland. They brought traditional Irish potatoes (here, just called "Irish" without "potatoes" at all, as in, "Would you like to buy some Irish?"), pavlova, and Christmas [fruit]cake. Yum! When we got home, we tried to call my family on Skype, but we kept getting disconnected. I guess too many people had the same idea!

But that's not the traditional Nigerian Christmas at all! Here's how it should have been:

We get up early and eat breakfast. We all put on our new outfits. (Everyone who can afford it buys a new outfit for Christmas Day.) We walk to church, where we stay for anywhere from two to five hours. Then we go visiting all our friends and family. OR we entertain guests at our house and feed them jallof rice, meat, and cin-cin. We have rice and chicken for dinner.

So our Christmas wasn't quite Nigerian, but not quite American either. I totally forgot about filling our shoes (the Scandinavian version of stockings). Oh well! Christmas remains the same--a celebration of Christ's birth and a reunion of family and friends. That's what matters, right?