Christmas in Africa

 As I write this, it is 35C, the sky is miles and miles and miles of unpunctured blue, and the air is hot and still.  I am sitting in the coolest room in the house, escaping the heat outside.  As I look around me at the Christmas tree in the corner, the tinsel adorning the pictures and the stockings hung next to the fireplace, I think like I always think at this time of the year: wouldn't it be nice to be somewhere cold? And then I think, no.  It wouldn't be Christmas if it wasn't hot.

I was ten years old when Band Aid brought out Do They Know It's Christmas? I remember my dad, who was very cynical of western do-gooders, scoffing at the lyrics, And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time. Of course there won't, he said.  There never is.  It is generally very difficult for people in the northern hemisphere to imagine a hot Christmas and I don't blame them.  What is strange though is to try and have a cold Christmas in a hot country.

My mother always insisted we have a traditional Christmas meal. Whatever the weather, we would always have a ham and a roast chicken with vegetables, potatoes, gravy (served hot) and a freshly steamed Christmas pudding with cream or brandy butter.  A salad was unheard of and so was the idea of having anything cold.  One Christmas, it was 38C - the hottest Christmas on record - but we sweltered heartily through it all just because it was Christmas and, well, it wouldn't be Christmas any other way.

I am sure we were not the only family who celebrated Christmas in a very British way, with mince pies and Christmas cake and crackers with silly jokes and paper hats.  When I imagined Father Christmas landing on the roof in his reindeer-drawn sleigh, I never thought of him sweating pints or longing to swop his suit for a pair of swimming trunks and take a dive in the pool. We were certainly not the only people to exchange cards with Victorian Christmas scenes, carol singers huddling together in the cold or robins chirping on snow laden branches. It would be a while yet before someone said, 'Hold on a minute.  This is Africa. Let's make our own cards. Let's do things our own way.'

Although Christmas was a happy time, there was always this feeling that floated around somewhere that something wasn't quite right.  My grandparents and parents would speak fondly of their childhood Christmases: finding nuts and oranges in their stockings, knocking on neighbourhood doors to sing carols, and waking to a snow-covered world on Christmas Day. There was no way our life in Zimbabwe was going to live up to these memories, and the best we could do as children was read books about cold, frosty Christmas Eves or watch films in which some prodigal son or daughter would return home on Christmas Eve, ploughing their way through a snow-covered landscape before being welcomed back by the family.  Somehow these family reunions would not have been the same in the heat of summer with everyone wearing shorts and tossing a couple of chicken pieces on the barbecue. The most we could ask for was rain, and that was not guaranteed. Yes, the magic of Christmas was inextricably linked with the cold of Christmas, and it was the reason we could never fully experience the season.

The first Christmas I spent in the UK as a student, I worked at hotel in Oxfordshire as a chambermaid and general kitchen hand - meaning I washed a lot of dishes and made a lot of beds!  The tiny village was beautiful. Covered in snow on Christmas Day, it looked exactly like the pictures on the Christmas cards my mum loved. But strangely, it did not feel like Christmas.  I was away from home, of course, and I had to help prepare all the guests' meals (and wash up) before I could sit down to my own Christmas dinner. And I wasn't a child waiting for Santa; I was a student desperately trying to save money.  But still, I couldn't help feeling something was missing.

 The funny thing is, after years of longing for a 'proper' Christmas, I missed the heat.  I missed the rain-drenched humid afternoons, I missed the flying ants and the Christmas beetles and the chongololos. Perhaps it is true of Christmas everywhere that, despite all the hype and excitement, it is often to some extent disappointing. The magic belongs more in Christmas card scenes and cringey movies. Or maybe it just belongs in our childhoods, and it doesn't really matter where that childhood takes place.  What you remember is the excitement and the joy.

I still struggle to have a cold Christmas lunch, although salads are allowed as long as they have a Christmas feel to them.  There is no way we can escape cringey Christmas movies set in snow-covered countries where the protagonists meet when their toboggans collide, or songs about winter wonderlands and sleighs dashing through the snow. With temperatures continuing to climb, I'm hoping for a cool Christmas, a rainy Christmas, a real African Christmas.