The Spirit of Christmas

Would you believe it? It's that time of the year already. I clearly remember reading the Mark Zuckerburg Person of the Year article in Time Magazine, this time last year. Where in God's name did the intervening one year go? Oh. Right. Reading, writing, chasing women. Note to self, stop chasing women.

Like everyone else, my fondest memories of Christmas time are from my childhood. The fondest one for me by far was the Christmas of 93. Don't know why I'd choose that particular Christmas, but between getting a new puppy, a few teddy bears (even way back then I had such high tastes) and watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas! on the awesome Cartoon Network, I can't see why not.

In recent years though, Christmas has grown increasingly uneventful. Christmas 2008 was spent watching horror movies (The Ring, Final Destination, Sleepy Hollow etc). 2009 was spent listening (and singing along to) La Roux. And 2010 was spent, well, reading Time Magazine. This year's already looks prime to follow this trend, with the exception of having some family members over and listening to the Rick Dees Christmas Special.

The thing is over here in Nigeria, where the temperature is well above freezing point all year round, we don't get the benefit of snowfall. So no snowmen, snowball fights or carolers wrapped in scarves and sweaters. The closet parallel we have to winter is something called harmattan, which is, according to my Encarta Dictionary, "an extremely dry dusty wind that blows from the Sahara toward the western coast of Africa, especially between November and March."


So to get into the Christmas spirit, we are relegated to slotting in a nice VHS copy (don't ask) of one of the classic Christmas movies, like Home Alone for example.


Another surefire way of conjuring up some of the good ol' Christmas spirit is listening to Christmas albums, the most popular over here (by no small margin) being Boney M's Christmas Album. If you've never heard this, or you're wondering who the hell is Boney M, then I suggest you head over to an online music store of your choice, and put on your dancing shoes.

Ah. Yes. I think I feel it already. Merry Christmas and God bless everyone.