I’ve been seeing so many posts on Twitter about what Christmas felt like for people who grew up in Nigeria in the 90s and I must say that it got me in my feelings. My Dad loved the east passionately, he went home whenever he could and he passed that to my sister and I. Growing up,we spent a large chunk of our lives in Owerri because every long vacation we were on the bus to go meet our Aunt Opi, and honestly those were some of my happiest memories.
Christmas for us started from December 1st. It was just the way it felt. The air was filled with anticipation and excitement. First my mum would take us to Lagos Island for our Christmas clothes and shoes, and then we would braid our hair, and start packing to go home. By the 17th, 18th at the latest we were on our way back home and the novelty never wore off.
The journey home was a hard one, hours and hours on the terrible roads and the car almost always had a problem but once the Onitsha bridge came into view, we knew we were halfway home. My grandmother was always at the gate waiting for us, every year without fail she would dance and welcome us and hug us so tightly.
Once we settled in, life took on a more colorful hue, we waited breathlessly for our cousins from Enugu and Onitsha to come home. Our house was always filled with people and my father would be in his element, hosting, introducing us to people we didn’t know and making sure we only spoke Igbo, ah! Good times.
Christmas had a smell, to me it smelled like smoked wood, clean air, and the lingering aroma of all the cooking happening all around. The crisp hammertan air made it even more pronounced. We ate all our meals together from breakfast to dinner and all the snacks in between. Life was good. We rang in the new year with our mother’s side of the family and my cousins on that side were just the absolute best. My memories from those years are so precious to me.
I have spent the last eight Christmases away from home and family and let me tell you, it’s been hard but that’s a story for another day. The memory that inspired this post happened last December.
My friend Chin was in town and I was showing him around and we went to the Christmas markets at the Distillery District, we were walking towards the shops when this smell hit me. It was smoky wood and pines I think and I am not exaggerating when I say it stopped me dead in my tracks. I stood there and took the deepest breath with a huge smile on my face and tears in my eyes. It smelled like home. For that brief second as I stood in Toronto, I went back in time to Eziama with my mum and my aunties, fanning the flames and waiting for the Jollof rice to finish cooking.
The moment passed and I continued on with my friend but that brief moment was a gift to me.
The holidays haven’t been the same for me in a long long time, my grandma passed away over ten years ago, she’s never going to be at the gate waiting for us again, my dad is gone too, I will never hear his booming laugh again, or roll my eyes at his insistence that I know a relative I have never met before. With each year that goes by those memories keep fading but I hope that one day when I have my own family, I can tell my children what Christmas means to me, how glorious it was back then and maybe we can incorporate some of my old traditions with the new and honor the ones that came before us.
“The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood” —Richard Paul Evans
Adaugo's Diary 