Bonus points to humanity for deciding that at the end of every year, we get a holiday to boost our blood pressure for the next 12 months. 2024 might have been a letdown but no melancholy withstands the fire in your heart that hatred of kin and high levels of cholesterol can ignite. However, if you, like me, actually like your family, that’s okay, in the matter of You v 2025, Christmas food alone will suffice for fuel for the tank and this is why:
Chr-ist-mas.food
/kri-sməs fuːd/
noun, Nigerian English
usually a combination of heavily spiced rice or soup and a drink of choice served at severely contrasting temperatures, opening for the headliner—meat.
For this article, I took a survey where 30 people (who will be included in my will) shared their favourite Christmas dishes.
Rice dishes and meat tied at 23 votes each. This, I expect, surprises no one. Popular knowledge holds that 70% of the Nigerian human body is rice. The other 30% is erudite insults under 280 characters.
What’s less widely conceptualized, though, is that the three pillars of Nigerian Christmas are; Jesus, Capitalism and the flesh of animals. We know the season is at a head when someone’s mother and a nearby youth behead a goat and roast it over a burning tyre. To this day, the smell of arsenic, cadmium, nickel and lead being introduced into my meat takes me back to harmattan mornings in 2010. A goated year if we’re being honest.
Christmas food for a lot of people comprises rice, oil, meat, oil, one bay leaf, and a bottle of freezing coke. Your heart is stopped and refrigerated as you walk into 2025 and in my opinion, there is no better way. After all, who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
What does it mean that regardless of how 2024 went, or how deep the economy dove, how jaded we’ve become, what we’ve lost, or who we’ve lost, many Nigerians will celebrate Christmas with above board meals? That Nigerians are deeply unserious? Maybe, but I think it also signifies faith.
Faith that things aren’t truly over. Faith in the promise of another chance. Faith that happiness and meaning are still possible. Faith that our lives hold something worth celebrating.
What we believe shapes our actions and, ultimately, our lives. The significance of what it means to share meals in celebration regardless of the disappointment or fear we carry can shape yours if you let it.
Here are the numbers for how important respondents say food is to Christmas:
On Christmas Day every year, people fill my family’s house like it’s a marriage seminar. My extended family, church members, and neighbours flow in, and for the low price of laughing at the jokes nobody else will, spend Christmas at ours.
It’s lowered guards and laughter and everyone finding their rhythm in serving one another as we cook and eat. In those moments is a real sense of community and belonging and it is increasingly comforting to go into a new year supported by the reality of the people who will choose and prefer you; your family, who, when it gets down to it, and even before it does, will always have your back.
The truth is, I don’t remember what I ate last Christmas, but I remember what it meant: being home after a tough year, surrounded by the people I love the most and who love me the most in the world, and that was truly uplifting.
Your meal today might raise your blood pressure, but it should also raise your spirits, so, if you’re feeling down, rice, and let the spirit of Christmas do its thing.
Here are some of your Christmas memories from the survey:
“Two years ago, on Christmas morning… before we went to church, my aunty woke us up pretty early to start preparing the different dishes. She assigned each of us to a particular meal. I wondered how we were going to finish up and make it to church on time. But, somehow we did. After the church service, we got home, set the table, kept the different dishes with drinks to go round and music to set the mood. We all had more than enough of each food. There was Jollof rice, fried rice, fried chicken, salad, afang soup, puff puff. Really, it was such a wonderful time. It’s one Christmas food memory that stands out to me.”
“It was when I was about 9 years old. My aunt did the usual chicken thing for Christmas. She left the protein on the gas cooker and came into the room to groove to Lucky Dube. Few minutes later something smelt like smoke. My mum rushed. My aunt followed. Dad wasn’t there or he would have been the first to laugh. Minutes later we doused the charred pieces in stew and pretended like we had deliberately roasted them. Rice and stew was fun that day.”
“Last year’s, I think. My siblings and I pulled money to collectively buy 2 chickens. It was memorable because our retired father couldn’t afford it for the past Christmas periods, and we were proud we could do this.”
“When my mum made Christmas stew in 2011 and my sister was asked to take the pot of stew into the room, on her way, she tripped and the stew poured. We had to make another “emergency” stew. Turns out the second one was a lot more tasty that the one that spilled, a whole lot more.”
“My mom knows I love pork. On December 25, 2020, she prepared Christmas meal with pork – not chicken, not goat meat, but pork! It was also relatively affordable compared to other types of meat. So, it was a win-win for both of us.”
“The one time we spent Christmas at my distant uncle’s house in 2020/21. The rice and stew? Sheesh. It was bussing. I can’t forget it.”
“…the last extended family Christmas gathering we had in 2022. I baked a cake, my mother made fruit smoothies and we took them to our family gathering. Basically, everyone from the other homes brought something to the table. We had a potluck, I think it’s called. It was so cool. I ate a little of everything. Or maybe a lot :)”
“To me, it’s not just the food.
The love, unity, ideas, laughter and expectations that come with the whole process of making the food… makes 25th December Christmas. Asides that, everyday in December would be the same because we obviously eat these dishes every other day.”
“The joy of just having people around and sharing is beautiful.”
Yes, it really is, and on this note, I wish you all the fruitful joys of the season and an amazing new year. If you enjoyed this, subscribe for more, and share it with someone who loves Christmas food! Or hit reply to share your own holiday memories—I’d love to hear from you.
Merry Christmas!