Stolen
Christmas
I lived for over a decade in the west and in the east. During those many years, I’ve seen how Christmas is celebrated abroad compared to in Africa.
If you are a foreigner in Europe, do you know why you lose all your friends and connections when it’s Christmas time?
The answer is simple. For Christmas everyone goes back to their family annual gathering at their parents or grandparents.
All brothers and sisters, and in some cases extended family members gather with their children, their husbands, their wives, and reunite with parents and grandparents to celebrate, exchange gifts, but more importantly to get each other news, know cousins, relatives in a festive mood.
Brothers and sisters come to know the husband, the wife and the children of their siblings. Children come to know their uncles and aunts, their grand parents, etc.
Those annual family gatherings are almost mandatory, and are used like annual evaluation of the family unity and its members evolution. Unresolved issues in the family are revisited, and new conflicts are started to keep the indispensable family drama alive.
In the east, and the north of Europe, where pagan traditions are still alive, young people use the period for winter solstice traditions celebrations.
Contrary to false idea africans have about individualism and the collapse of family in Europe, let me tell you that family links are still very strong in Europe, and many events are leveraged to strengthen the members connection: Christmas, baptism, weddings, easter, almost mandatory annual gift and greetings to other family members.
When we Africans perceive Europeans as united and very helpful to each other, all that comes from the preservation of family unity and strength as the foundation of their societies.
Events like Christmas annual gathering and the almost mandatory annual gift and greetings to other family members are the cornerstone of the European family resilience and strength regardless of the ravage of modern individualism.
Now about Christmas in Africa.
The only thing I can say is that Christmas is mostly taken as opportunity for excessive drinking, clubbing, sexing, and eating. Most people I know are celebrating lonely, or only in their nuclear family, and most young people use the period for trading sex for gifts and binging.
Christmas is not an African tradition, and like many cultural things Africans have imported from abroad they are misunderstood and misused to harm the continent.
Christianity had successfully destroyed the African family, while the in the lands where that christianity has been imported from, it’s used to strengthen and unite families.
There are annual traditional celebration in African culture dedicated to family gatherings, but they are all disappearing and everyday that passes loneliness is becoming worst in Africa than everywhere else in the world.
The collapse of the African family is compromising our common future.
Many call for African unity and solidarity, but that first starts at the family level and later at societal and racial level. You can not unite a continent without healthy families at the foundation.