Where are the Christmas huts, courtesies?

Some Christmas traditions are gradually fading away maybe due to urbanisation or technology. In the past, few weeks before Christmas, huts were built with palm fronds where both the young and old gathered in the evenings to tell stories, drum and dance the whole night.

Today’s children do not like very difficult tasks - especially one that they have to sweat to create. However, in the past, children competed among themselves in the construction and decoration of the Christmas huts.

The elders in the neighbourhood also showed interest in the activities of the children, therefore, they visited the Christmas huts to encourage the children.

The most organised group earned some coins and Piccadilly biscuits; the winning team strung them into beads and wore them around their necks.

Though the whole activity was fun based, as the children played together and performed tasks, they learnt basic lessons like team building and social networking. Our childhood friends have been able to sustain a certain support network.

Just as the extended family has been broken down to just the nuclear family, mutual and person-to-person celebrations of Christmas have been replaced with technology such as Viber, Tango, WhatsApp, BBM, Skype, text messages, Facebook, telephone calls among others.

People no longer deem it necessary to travel home to make merry with their people during Christmas.

Those who live in the same city with their friends and relatives just recycle Christmas text messages they received to many people or call to wish them Merry Christmas.

Interestingly, in most cases, the same Christmas message would be sent to hundreds of people no matter the variations in social relations.

The bus terminals are not as packed with travellers as it used to be as petty traders, hawkers, head porters who often return to their villages to mark the Christmas with their families have replaced their travelling agenda with the mobile money transfers which to them is economical.

As Abeiku Adom, a shoeshine boy, puts it: “It is better to transfer money than travel home these days because going home means going with new clothes, shoes and some cash on you to make show for the people at home to know you have indeed arrived,” he explained.

It was a common practice for families to breed fowls at home in the year purposely for Christmas and children enjoyed the sport of chasing home-bred fowls that attempted to escape being slaughtered for Christmas meals.

“We knew the importance of those home-bred fowls in the Christmas celebration and we hunted for these fowls with enthusiasm until they were caught,” said Emelia.

Unfortunately, the fun of catching these fowls is no more as people love to go in for the imported frozen chicken as they are cheaper than even the local breeds.