It's much more easier to enjoy Christmas as a child than as a grown up. I remember so vividly how I look forward to the Christmas holiday because I will get to have a new pairs of shoes , clothes and even get to be pampered with an expensive hairdo.
Christmas then is always celebrated in the village and the whole house will be filled up with my relatives. Uncles, niece, cousins,aunts , nephews and distant relatives will all come back to celebrate the Christmas under one roof. My father God bless his soul, built a mighty duplex with about 15 rooms and so the house was able to contain all of us. I shared a room with my favourite cousin Adaobi and Onyinye because we happened to be the same age. In this period I don't know the hard work that the grown ups have to put in to make the Christmas holiday a memorable one for us. From the shopping, cooking and taking us out to watch the masquerades.
As an adult Christmas became boring for me and more like work. I stopped looking forward to celebrating the Christmas in the village because it was just like i was going to the village to serve as a chef to the whole family. I and my other cousins were finally the chefs because we have come of age to cook and the ones cooking before were all married.
Imagine staying in the kitchen from morning till night cooking
What's the need of coming back for Christmas then?
I would gladly prefer to stay back in the city
But the thought of being United with family members was so exciting that I will rather turn to a family chef than to miss out on seeing my family. We cook with the biggest pot, those type that are used to cook for events. If we want to cook rice for the family then it will be half bag of rice. If it's yam we will cook ten tubers of yam. It was as if we were cooking for a wedding. Then oneday during 25th December, I sneaked out of the house after preparing lunch. I and my friends had planned on going to the next village for a house warming party. Coming back there was big traffic and I got back so late that the entire family knew about it. My father was very angry with me and my uncles tried to pacify him.
What if something bad had happened to you? You went out without informing anyone and you came back so late
I tried to defend myself thus explained how the cooking arrangement made us not to have enough time for ourselves during the Christmas and also deprived us of having fun. That night my father and my uncles met together at the family living room to discuss about all that I said. The next morning they informed us that they are employing chefs that will take over the cooking and that will be how every Christmas will be like going forward.
Just as they said, in the afternoon three women arrived our house and introduced themselves as our new chefs. They went to work immediately and prepared a delicious lunch for everyone. The whole family were so happy as we all got to enjoy our holiday. We went out to watch the masquerades and visit our other relatives without bothering about anything. We also went further to appreciate our parents who lifted that burden off our shoulder.
That Christmas was a memorable one because it was the Christmas that we gained our freedom from over working ourselves in the kitchen.