2024.
This will probably be my first year to not travel home for Christmas.
I thought about it deep and hard and concluded that I was done pretending to be obsessively in love with the day. It’s definitely isn’t the day Jesus was born. I have never had Carol singers at my door. Never have I ever bought a pine tree and decorated it with ornaments and lights with presents around. I’ve never had anyone gift me a Christmas present, nor has any employer offered me a Christmas bonus. We never had the highly coveted ugly Christmas sweaters or matching pajamas'. There never has been a long dining table bringing the big family together to share a meal and celebrate in the spirit of Christmas.
If we were to be real,
Christmas is a holiday best experienced by kids and enjoyed by men. For women though, it’s the absolute worst time of the year.

All through, kids’ love the season when they catch up with the many cousins and do sleepovers and enjoy the celebrity status awarded to them by village kids. Men on the other hand leave home in the morning and come back late- drunk; or spend the entire day seated under some tree, sipping muratina or gruel, chapaing stories on how ABCDEFU the government is.
The girls, ladies, women, aunties, cucus…spend the entire day killing their backs in an effort to make the holiday a success and memorable for the kids and men.
The celebrators and enjoyers wake up to a variety of hot tantalizing breakfast whose aroma works as an alarm to jumpstart the day.
All day long and at times week, females will be waking up at crack of dawn to clean the house, do the dishes, get food ready, wake everyone up, feed them, do the dishes, bath the little ones, clean the house, rearrange the house, set a location for their lazy men to hold their drunken barazas, prep meals, feed the babies, serve the men, do the dishes, cook some more, then more, then more, and more, and more.
Severally, I have found myself as the only female at home over Christmas – mom doesn’t count cos’ she relaxes the moment she sees me – and I have to cook all varieties of food for the family aka ‘guests’ who have very 'demanding' jobs and 'hectic schedules' that they only get a day off work. They arrive with their huge families with nothing but 1kg of Naivas sugar and 2kg of Exe flour and expect to be seated and served.
They ask that you get them some chairs so they can sit outside, bring the mattress out for the kids to play on, ask if you can warm some yoghurt and wash and peel grapes for their kids. They demand that you wash their hands before being served food because apparently they forgot where the tap is and complain that you didn’t offer a towel to dry off their hands.
They overload their plates with every type of food and complain how my chapatis are hard, the meat not tender enough, the soup too salty, vegies overcooked, the rice too ugalish…one or two jokes how they are having mashakura for Christmas.
None ever clears their plate. They eat and dump dirty dishes at the table awaiting their slave of a relative to play waitress and dishwasher. Food that I spent 10+ hours making is eaten in less than 10 minutes. Clearly, mla kwa pupa hadiriki tamu.
While the one with the car volunteers to rush to the shop and get a crate of soda, the other asks for chai. I got to make it all different. Some don’t take majani, others sugar, and there are those who don’t take milk. Ooh, and kids’ got to have theirs at room temperature.
They are by now talking about how they have to get back on the road before night falls leaving me to clean the mammoth of dishes they have dirtied and the charred sufurias that will definitely eat off my nails to the skin.
I have to rewarm and set more food for supper before I retire to bed. Heck, I never even got to take a shower. Strangers must have thought of me as the help – not family. Now, I’m drained. Exhausted, filthy and asleep. I don’t want to hit the sheets like this but, I pass out as soon as I lay on the bed to take a breath.
This is the experience of a single and childless woman. God knows what the married ones who go to shags for the holidays go through.
That’s why this year, I have decided to ward off this oppression and instead adopt a new tradition that will make Christmas perfect for me.
It’s time to be Selfish. And Happy.
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