The African Christmas
Christmas has always felt a little complicated to me.
On the surface, it’s everywhere..music, decorations and the forced cheer and assumption that everyone is celebrating the same thing for the same reasons. But under that noise, I’ve never been able to fully buy into it. Not because I’m trying to be different or contrarian, but because once you start questioning history, our history..it’s hard to pretend Christmas arrived on African soil as a neutral or innocent tradition.
I don’t really believe in Christmas in the way it’s commonly sold to us. Not spiritually, not culturally. And definitely not uncritically.
Years ago, I saw a photograph that stamped itself in my mind and hasn’t left since. Enslaved Africans lined up beside their masters. On the image, the words “Merry Xmas” were written, one letter assigned to each enslaved person. Basically a festive greeting built on the backs of people who had no freedom to reject it.
That image did something to me.
It made me think about how deeply intertwined Christianity, colonialism and control were and still are. Christmas wasn’t just a celebration that wandered onto the continent by accident. It came alongside the Bible and the gun. Alongside forced conversion, renaming, restructuring of values and the suggestion that everything African was backward and everything European was “civilized.”
I had this conversation with a friend a few days ago and they said it’s harmless, but I know it wasn’t harmless to everyone. At the same time, I won’t lie…this is where the conflict sits.
I’m African, but I’m also a product of the world colonialism created. I grew up around Christmas. I know the rhythm: the food, the slowed down pace and the reconnections. I personally associate this season with family and with rest. In Ghana especially, Christmas feels less like doctrine and more like atmosphere, music from somewhere down the street, people returning from the diaspora and so on.
And I can appreciate that without pretending I don’t know where the foundation came from.
That’s the vibe I’m sitting with this season.
I don’t feel joy in the religious sense. I don’t feel any reverence for the holiday itself. But I do feel reflective. Christmas for me has become less about celebrating and more about asking some questions: What parts of my life are inherited rather than chosen? What traditions do I participate in out of habit rather than belief? What does freedom look like when culture itself has been shaped by coercion?
As an African, I think it’s important that we give ourselves permission to feel mixed emotions about things we were taught to accept. Not everyone will agree with me. But, we’re allowed to enjoy time off without endorsing the theology and we’re definitely also allowed to critique without hating ourselves or our families for participating.
Rejecting the theology doesn’t mean rejecting rest, community or generosity. Those things existed in Africa long before December 25th had meaning here.
So no, I don’t “believe” in Christmas. At least not in the commercial, church-approved sense. This season, I’m not celebrating, I never have actually.I’m acknowledging that joy can exist alongside trutha, nd that sometimes the most African thing you can do is question what you were told was sacred.
That’s what Christmas means to me now
