Season’s greetings!

The aroma of freshly baked cookies wafting through the air rang in Christmas better than any carol could.

The closely clustered houses in different Katlehong neighbourhoods pushed out clouds of smoke from their Welcome Dover stoves’ chimneys, and kitchens emitted the scent of Potchefstrooms (also known as scones in larney places), biscuits, queen’s cakes, jam tarts, and vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon or strawberry sponge cakes.

For those of us who lived with our grandparents in the homelands, this was a time to be with our parents and siblings and enjoy the comforts and conveniences of township and city life. Some years would be bleak with what became known as a “black Christmas”, associated with a consumer boycott or the state of emergency imposed by the apartheid regime, but when they weren’t, nothing could beat Christmas time for Black children.

The joy of blowing up balloons and hanging tinsel from the ceiling or draping it on walls and doors to create a glittering effect all around the house made everything magical. The Christmas tree was a centrepiece with all the decorative trappings, and once the township got electrified we took it up a notch with a tree that could light up in the night, just like the ones in town in shop windows.

On Christmas Eve, neighbours would hurry up and down the road to share their bakes and surprise each other with new recipes or twists, such as adding raisins to the Potchefstrooms. Others sent gifts of sweets, chocolates or even watermelon.

My mother’s ace up her sleeve was always her pineapple-infused ginger beer. If you didn’t receive a jug of Ma Mofokeng’s ginger beer it could easily sour the relationship for the rest of the festive season into the New Year.  

The 12-in-a-pack Christmas postcards bought at the shop led to debate and competition. Which neighbours made it onto the list, and which didn’t? It would be a tussle as we argued for our favourite friends and their families. In the end, a compromise would be reached and those who didn’t receive cards would be saved for the following year.

There was always a soundtrack for Christmas, and no, it was not a carol but rather a bubble-gum or pop song of the year, usually a Brenda Fassie hit or one of Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s. Hits such as Higher and Higher and Ngiyakusaba made their debut during the festive season and went on to become classics.

One classic that survived many Christmases was Mary’s Boy Child by Boney M, the disco quartet from Germany, which was played on TV as though it were the international anthem of Christmas.

American and British hits also found their way onto our playlist, and for long, some believed that Last Christmas by Wham! was a Christmas carol. Later on, Luther Vandross’s Every Year Every Christmas and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You became favourites. Then there was Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Band Aid, which became synonymous with festive. Music has always been part of merrymaking. 

Christmas Day started with the dancing sun, or so we were told. My father insisted that if I woke up before sunrise, I would see the sun dancing. But because of the excitement of Christmas Eve, which exhausted us, and all the anticipation we could never open our eyes before sunrise. Curiously, the adults wouldn’t call us up when we overslept, and each year we woke up with, “Eish, I missed the dancing sun.”

Some older children professed to having seen this elusive sun dance… I never did. Now, in my adult life, I wonder whether it’s because of global warming that the sun has stopped dancing. And I can’t wake up my kids early to see this wondrous solar event that comes only once a year, because, of course, it’s a fallacy.

I was always troubled by Santa Claus. Imagine a white man from the North Pole with a big beard trudging through the streets of Katlehong with a bag full of goodies and looking for our house so that he could fill my mother’s old stockings tied to the foot of the bed with sweets. It was preposterous. In my naïve mind I still gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought he was a brave man who cared a lot about children, so much so that he would risk walking in the streets at midnight. Then I heard that he flew in a sled with reindeer and came in through the chimney. That’s when I lost hope.

I finally had the guts to confront my grandmother about Father Christmas when I was in high school. She confessed that she was the one tying those stockings and dropping gifts under the Christmas tree. Oh, the betrayal and disappointment. Trust was broken and Christmas was ruined.

But before my unmasking the real Santa, a bath on Christmas Day was a quick affair, as we couldn’t wait to jump into our Christmas clothes, which had been carefully wrapped in the back of the wardrobe. Unfurling these from the plastic bags and laying them on the bed to admire them was the greatest feeling. I guess that’s where the adage “like a child on Christmas Day” comes from.

Tearing off the tag and smelling the new clothes did something to the soul and mind of a young child. It gave you a spring in your step, made you feel all fresh and shiny. Most of the time it would be a clothing item you’d been wishing for the whole year.

Walking into church with a new outfit and pair of shoes gave one confidence money couldn’t buy. The services would be short, which was great because we needed to get out of there and collect sweets.

Visiting neighbours for “Christmas” (when children asked for sweets and cookies) would mean a barrage of compliments about how clean or smart one looked.

Finally, back home, the mothers (and sometimes fathers) who had been slaving away before the stove would sit us down for lunch. A seven-colour Christmas plate had to include essentials such as rice, pumpkin, beetroot, spinach, baked-bean-and-peas salad, corn, and meat — depending on whether a sheep had been slaughtered that year, we would feast on mutton or turkey.  

The lunch was a three-course meal that included the seven-colour plate, dessert — usually custard, jelly, and canned peaches — and a special juice or milkshake. A feast fit for festive.

Now, the spirit of Christmas has diminished. There is no more tinsel in our homes, all of us — six-year-olds included — know that Santa is not real, the magic is gone. But Christmas has been reimagined by many families and new traditions have emerged.

One positive thing about modern Christmases is the unmistakable African aesthetic. With its being a summer holiday in the southern hemisphere, it’s impractical to have a Santa kitted out in the red Eskimo-like suit in the sweltering heat of the highveld. Africans have put their own stamp on the day while keeping some traditions, such as slaughtering a sheep for a braai and having a family celebration over watermelon under a tree in a village or on a farm.

Holding on to past practices, Christmas remains a perfect excuse to go on a shopping spree for clothes, shoes, and gifts. Children may not be as excited about these outfits as we had been, but they will wear them at some point further down the line. The idea of exchanging gifts as a family is crucial in ensuring cohesion. 

And while neighbours don’t share baked goodies anymore, in their own way some kindness is still shared across the fences, be it a bottle of beer or whisky, and that counts for something.

In today’s world, with so many ways in which to consume music, it is hard to herd everybody towards a common song of the year. Tastes have developed and preferences have changed, just as many music genres have evolved. As such, each has their own song of the year dictated by their own persuasions. Boney M is a thing of the past, unless your family still insists on it for the sake of nostalgia. But, Mariah Carey has made a return with All I Want for Christmas Is You, which she first released in 1994 and is now dominating Christmas charts some 25 years later — further proof that they don’t make Christmases like they used to.