Public Group
African is colourful with different and interesting cultures. This group features the different African culture and their significance to the African society.
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Africa is a unique blend of religions, and Christmas can mean different things to different African sects. Even among Christians, the main observers of the season, there are varying beliefs as to whether it is indeed a commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, however, the common thread is that it is a holiday season and the atmosphere across Africa shows so, regardless of the different ways people perceive the season.
Interestingly, the continent responds to key calendar dates from any of the major religions, and with Christians making up almost half of the continent’s population, Christmas is significant in Africa. The fizz and fun begin way before, and linger beyond, the 25th day of December.
There may be similarities in how it is celebrated globally, but there are also sights, sounds, and symbols peculiar to Africa alone this season. Forget the snow, the trees – dummy or live, and the western carols, Africa is known to party big, and Christmas is just the perfect time to enjoy the company of your family and friends, preferably over bottles of cold drinks and steaming trays of yummy meals.
In Africa, Christmas is festive and colorful. There are cheerful concerts, sunny outdoor feasts, and Christmas Street parades. Sheep, goats, cows, chickens, turkeys, and other animals happily lay down their lives, like Jesus, because Africans must meet the need for meat this season.
For almost everyone in Africa, even non-Christians too, Christmas is a time to gather with friends and family since it is also primarily a holiday season. Everyone counts down to the end of the year when all their pent-up party mood is released. It is not unusual to see a Muslim vendor selling Santa hats or decorative Christmas lights, or people who aren’t particularly religious cheerfully wishing their neighbors a very merry Christmas. It is indeed a jolly season.
Diversity even in unity has always been an admirable trait of the African continent. Every African country has its unique festive traditions. From masquerade parties to bespoke gatherings, sizzling African Christmas traditions abound in Africa.
Church services and the singing of Christmas Carols are regular parts of the festivity. Churches are usually filled to the brim. Churches are typically decorated with Christmas trees, ribbons, sweets, and lights – anything sparkly and Christmas-like works. Practicing Christians will traditionally attend a midnight church service on Christmas Eve, during which they might be treated to poems, hymns, plays, and a re-enactment of the Nativity.
After church, preparations begin for the big meal.
Food tastes better at Christmas. They come as special Christmas feasts. Most Africans will agree that Christmas adds a special flavor to food, even if you ate the same thing just the night before. In Nigeria, Christmas rice reigns supreme. Rice is usually served with delicious tomato stew, with fried chicken being the choice meat for the season. In rural areas, people are known to rear special goats or chickens to be served as Christmas meat.
Ghanaians, when not serving their popular ‘Ghana Jollof’, will eat porridge and delicious soups served with fufu.
In South Africa, sweets are an active part of Christmas. You are expected to eat until you can no longer take it.
While ‘Father Christmas’, as he is nicknamed in Nigeria, is a regular face during the season, not everyone believes in Santa Claus. Some countries in Africa don’t believe in a phony-bearded, chubby guy in red, crawling up openings in your house to leave you gifts. In Liberia, Santa is replaced by Old Man Bayka.
Unique Christmas decorations – lights, Christmas trees, etc., adorn the continent’s landscape. The streets in the big cities also can have colorful Christmas lights.
If you want to feel the intensity of rural-urban migration, you should visit an African city during Christmas time. Cities become empty at Christmas when city-dwellers flock back home to the rural areas. What’s the point of working so hard in the city if you don’t get to buy a few gifts, travel home to your village, spend time with your family and visit old friends? Most Africans go down to their roots during Christmas. In Nigeria, most city dwellers build beautiful houses in their villages just so they can receive their kin whenever they go home for Christmas. In traffic-laden cities like Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, etc., traffic is most likely reduced a tad bit at this time of the year because people are usually back home celebrating.
Most Africans will tell you how their parents bought them new clothes in September, to be worn at Christmas. This is because clothing items are usually very expensive around Christmas. Sellers will hike prices because they are sure people will still buy, which is a simple matter of demand and supply. Adults are usually not left out of this fun, as special clothes are bought and set aside to be worn on Christmas day. Tailors, grinding harder under the high number of orders, will usually stop taking orders around November. It is considered a travesty to disappoint a customer by not delivering their Christmas clothes on time. What’s Christmas without new clothes? The parties are a good place to show off their new clothes.
Gift-giving is another central theme of Christmas and Africa is big on this one. It is a time loved ones exchange gifts.
Sharing is key during Christmas. Is feasting all about hanging around, and eating with, only family members? Not so. Africans who celebrate Christmas ensure that others are carried along in the feasting.
Non-Christian neighbors are usually invited to the Christmas lunch or dinner table. It is a season of love after all. Food is not the only thing Africans share. Christmas gifts are popular, and the most common gift items include money, clothes, electronic devices, food items, livestock, etc.
Africa is such a colorful continent, and there is no better time to experience diverse cultures than Christmas time. Expect seasonal cultural dances and displays in parts of Nigeria and Kenya. In South Africa, beautiful cultural dancers and singers will take your breath away. You would see African masquerades, especially those that only come out during festive seasons like Easter, Christmas, and New Year. You can partake in masquerade parties in Sierra Leonne and Gambia, so if you must visit, keep your camera handy for some record-worthy shots.
Christmas isn’t on the same day everywhere in Africa. In Ethiopia, the holiday is not celebrated on December 25 as it is done all over the world. The Julian calendar pushes the holiday to January 7. The fun might be postponed, but it is still fun, nonetheless. In Ghana, the festivities start early around December 1, when shops and homes are decorated with Christmas trees and blinking lights. There is also a double celebration as Christmas falls on the end of the cocoa harvest.
Christmas eventually becomes many things. Africans will tell you that Christmas is not a stand-alone holiday. People eagerly include as many days in the fun as possible. Since it is usually a holiday season and a lot of people visit home because they have more time on their hands, events like coronations, weddings, etc., strategically fall within this period.
On Christmas Day itself, it’s common to see children and adults go from house to house singing carols. In Zimbabwe, for example, the day starts with a visit to Church, and people will dress in their finest traditional attire or Western clothes, just as they do in the West. After Church is when the big meal happens, but instead of spending the entire day at home, people typically will go to visit extended family and friends before returning to their homes.
Children in Zimbabwe believe that Santa Claus brings them their presents early on Christmas Day, ready to show their friends at Church and parties. Only the main room in the house is often decorated in Zimbabwe. Some Zimbabweans have a traditional ‘European’ Christmas Tree, but they decorate the room with plants. This is draped around the whole top of the room.
Christmas Carols are sung during the Christmas Day morning service and in services leading up to Christmas and the Christmas Cards that are used in Zimbabwe sometimes have pictures of wild animals. The special food eaten at Christmas in Zimbabwe is Chicken with rice.
In Zambia, where faith and religion play an important role in the lives of ordinary Zambians, you can expect to hear fireworks and the sound of honking vehicles on the night before Christmas.
The 26th of December, known as the Day of Goodwill, is also a day of celebration, and it’s a time for South Africans to give back to society after the Christmas holiday. One way to do this is by donating to charity.
Of the East African countries, Ethiopia, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya are probably the most enthusiastic about Christmas. Tanzania, with its large Muslim population, tends not to elevate this festival, although the Christians in the country certainly do.
As with other Christmas-celebrating countries around the world, Christmas in chiefly Christian East African countries is a time for being with extended family. Homes are decorated with ribbons, balloons and flowers, and a Christmas tree.
Burundians love Christmas as much as they love to party. The Rwandans? Not keen on Christmas, but you might get a warm response if you wish someone ‘Noheli nziza’.
In Uganda, the Bantu language of the Baganda people, Uganda, feels free to wish someone ‘Sekukkulu ennungi.’ You can expect to hear Christmas songs blaring from radios and TVs, on street corners and from homes, particularly songs by the iconic late Ugandan musician Philly Bongoley Lutaaya, with classics such as ‘Tumusiinze’, ‘Zuukuka’ and ‘Azaalidwa’. Here, Christmas effectively starts on December 15th, the date when many employees receive their salaries. Then the good times roll –notably feasting, drinking, and general partying.
In Kenya, you’ll hear ‘Krismas njema’, which means ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Heri ya krimasi’. Kenyans love a good Christmas and will usually celebrate the season with a variety of meats, fondly referred to as nyama choma, Swahili for ‘roast meat’. Chickens, goats, sheep, and cows will be slaughtered and prepared on the grill. Meats will be parceled out to neighbors, friends, and family. The meat is usually served with rice and chapati bread. In the villages, a charming tradition is dancing and singing around a fire.
How about the Ethiopians? With many Christian Ethiopians belonging to the Orthodox Church, Ethiopians celebrate Christmas, called ‘Genna’, on 7 January. Santa is conspicuously absent in Ethiopia; instead, elders wear serious-looking black robes and offer homemade bread, called ‘defo dabo’, to children and say a hearty ‘Melkam Genna’ to them.
The Advent fast before Genna consists of eating a diet free from meat, fish, milk, and dairy products. The fast is broken on Genna with a sumptuous feast of Ethiopian food, fit for kings, which includes an abundance of dishes containing chicken, bee,f, and lamb. A few days before Genna, you’ll spot people transporting live chickens on the streets and in buses. You’ll see sheep everywhere too.
Genna for Ethiopians, refreshingly, is less about the material and more about the spiritual. A charming tradition is the strewing of grass across the floors of houses to prepare for guests coming to eat the Christmas or Genna meal. Genna food tends to include injera with w’et (a stew), which is usually made with lamb, beef, fish, goat, or chicken, plus a variety of vegetables. Another dish eaten at Genna is ‘Doro w’et’, a chicken stew containing hard-boiled eggs. Genna is rounded off with a coffee and popcorn ceremony (Bunna) and homemade drinks including Tej (an Ethiopian wine made from fermented honey) and Tela (homemade Ethiopian beer from the Gesho shrub).
A quaint feature of the celebrations is the playing of games, including the classic ‘Ye Ganna Ghewata’, a game resembling hockey, although this is mostly played in villages and the countryside. Legend has it that the shepherds at the time of Christ’s birth played a similar game using their crooks.
Egyptian Christians are also part of the Coptic Orthodox Christian tradition who, like the Ethiopians, celebrate Christmas on January 7th. They are the only Egyptians who celebrate Christmas. For this sect, Advent, the 43 days before Christmas, runs from the 25th of November to the 6th of January, Christmas eve.
The big meal is after the church service, with a banquet of dishes served that contain predominantly chicken, beef, eggs, and foods not eaten during the Advent fast.
West Africa is a heavily Christianized part of Africa, so it’s not surprising that Christmas is widely celebrated across countries in the region. Many traditions have their roots in pre-Christian cultures, however, such as the masquerades in Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
Even in predominantly Muslim Senegal, the influence of Christianity has trickled in, and it’s not unusual to see Santa in shops.
In Guinea-Bissau, which used to be a Portuguese colony, traditions include the eating of ‘bacalao’, on Christmas Eve – a dish of Scandinavian dried cod. Midnight mass and street parties are prominent features of the Christmas season, to which all, i.e., Christians, Muslims, and the non-religious, are invited.
In Sierra Leone, partying and feasting on a variety of foods are predominant. In addition, pre-Christian traditions such as masquerades as well as traditional costumes sit comfortably with Christian sermons and Christian songs, which are played in the streets for all to enjoy.
In the Gambia, masquerades are also a Christmas sight, particularly the Agugu masquerade, which is accompanied by dancing and the soliciting of donations for the New Year festivities.
In Liberia, Santa who? In Liberia? It appears to be an objectionable idea. Children celebrate the legend of Old Man Bayka, the county “devil” who – instead of giving presents – walks up and down the street begging for them on Christmas Day. The old man acts out morality tales filled with social commentary that chastises the rich for their treatment of the poor. The performances are great shows filled with singing and dancing and lots of laughter and are aimed at teaching children the importance of looking after those less fortunate than themselves.
The performance concludes with a festival of feasting and celebration, with the main meal being a goat stew served with biscuits – part of this wonderful legend.
For Nigerians, Church service begins the day after which an ‘open house’ follows, guests can pop in throughout the day to visit and reminisce about the year’s events. Food is both Western and traditional, so you’ll find jollof rice, fried rice, coconut rice, efo, various stews of different meats, turkey, an assortment of vegetables, Christmas pudding, and mince pies. And plenty of alcohol. The day for many Nigerians continues with much partying, which typically lasts for a couple of days. Nigerians light up these things they call knockouts or banga, which are essentially firecrackers.
An interesting tradition in Ghana is the honoring of the legend of Anna, who is said to have assisted in the birth of Christ in Bethlehem and rescued him from a Judean king with nefarious plans. The story of Anna is told every Christmas, and it is a tradition to honor all midwives during the Christmas season. Christmas in Ghana is a well-deserved break, coinciding with the end of the cocoa harvest and beginning on December 1, four weeks before Christmas. Families decorate their homes and neighborhoods using lights, candles, and sparkly ornaments. For most Ghanaians, it’s just the beginning. On Christmas Day, things kick into full swing, starting with a family meal – usually consisting of goat, vegetables, and soup – and followed by a church service for the whole community and a colorful holiday parade.
Christmas in Benin has thus far resisted the influence of the heavily commercialized Christmas celebrations in neighboring countries such as Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria. In Benin, Christmas is marked by a strong religious focus. This includes pre-Christian elements such as masquerades, as well as conventional religious sermons.
Nearby Togo is notable for its French Christmas traditions, the food is distinctly Togolese and includes yummy foods such as fufu, gboma dessi, jollof rice, and akara.
An interesting case is that of the Dogon population in southern Mali. Here, Christianity, Islam, and traditional African religions coexist and are increasingly blending their unique traditions with midnight masses and meals inspired by the Bible.
Each year sees new and novel Christmas traditions being established, and this is particularly true for West and Central Africa, a region known for its cultural multiplicity.
Christmas Eve is very important in the DRC. Churches host big musical evenings (many churches have at least five or six choirs) and a nativity play. These plays last a very long time, starting at the beginning of the evening with the creation and the Garden of Eden and ending with the story of King Herod killing the baby boys. On Christmas day, most families try to have a better meal than usual. If they can afford it, they will have some meat, normally chicken or pork.
I could go on and on with my findings on the Christmas celebration in Africa, but I will rather hear from you.
What unique and unusual African Christmas cultures can you share?
