By
Obododimma
Oha
The
celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth comes every year with its
interesting lexical shapes and colours, just like the ancestor, Father
Christmas himself. It would be particularly interesting to pay attention to the
names that Christmas is given in the Igbo society and the kind of emotion each
comes with. Names are important discourses in themselves and could help us to
understand the kind of feelings and attitudes attached to their bearing. In
this case, it is the names given to a religious festival. We know how emotional
and illogical people could get when it comes to religion. Added to that is the
emotion attached to the names of the feast they are celebrating. Moreover, the
feast and the religion are clearly foreign; they are not African. The
celebrants were colonized and have used it to replace their indigenous
festivals they regarded as “pagan” and retrogressive. The festival is,
therefore, in many ways, not just a sign of their faith, but one of the signs
of the instruments of their colonization. This is a fact, that cannot be
suppressed! Igbo people may therefore be said to be celebrating Christmas as
part of what they have received from the outside, historically, and some may
try to localize it, as part of the necessary inculturation in their hybridity.
This article
assumes that the celebration of Christmas it itself a signifier of affiliation
to Christianity, even if some of the celebrants are not aware of it, or do not
care about it. Also, the names they give to what they are celebrating might be a
clue to their attitudes to the religion and its meaning.
With this as
background I proceed (cautiously) to analyze
and discuss the names that feature in Igbo public discourses. One that
readily comes to mind is “Kresimeesi” or “Ekresimeesi”. This just a domestication
of “Christmas” and the process of this word formation happens when an
equivalent cannot be found in the local language to translate the term.
Christmas is not equivalent to either New Yam Festival or ọkwụ (in some Igbo
parts). A sensible thing to do is to render the term as if it is a term in the
indigenous language; to dress it up locally. It is another way of localizing
Christ or Christianity itself. This reminds one of the album, “Jesus in Africa”
by Chuks Ofojebe in which he sang that if he eats gari or “akpu,” Jesus has
eaten them. Similarly, making Jesus speak Nigerian pidgin is one interesting
way making him an indigene through expression. Along that line, why won’t a
celebration of his birth be also localized or given a local expression? Indeed,
in “Kresimeesi”, Jesus the Christ is in Igboland speaking Igbo.
Another
interesting nomenclature that is popular among Igbo business people mainly is Onwa
Disemba (a deictic reference, using the
month of the celebration as a synecdoche for Christmas). Such comes with the
hustle and bustle of the month in which this feast takes place, with people
buying lavishly and in large quantities (with some to give away), travels and
holidaying, meetings, etc. Indeed, the celebration is not just the birth of
Christ for them, but a month when so many important things happen.
Incidentally, this season (it is really a season!) falls at the end of the year
and so runs into New Year celebrations, too!
Thus,
celebrating “Onwa Disemba” (which is also the title of a Nollywood film that
focuses on the misdeeds of people who want to celebrate the season in vanity)
is already an alert for business people who must sell to make gains as if they
would die after that! Even in the Western world where we have “sales” during
the season, it is not just a commercial practice of being liberal, but pushing
out the remnants of goods to tempt buyers to rush for them. As a gbanjo trader
(auction trader) once, I can tell you that you make more gain and do not delay
your merchandise when you reduce the price to a tempting level!
Close on the
heels of this is “ịgba Disemba” (still a
deictic reference in which the month is synecdocically used). The word “ịgba”
in Igbo means to celebrate (or as a nominal, celebration). Every other feast
goes with it, whether indigenous or otherwise. The infinitive carries with it
emotions of happiness and noise. This happiness may have been abused, but there
is lavishness in the Igbo idea of celebration, what more a feast. Maybe there
is something cultural about it and so Igbo Christians are still Igbo and cannot
afford to be sad as deep Christians! For them, deed down, a celebration is a
celebration.
One also
hears Igbo elite talk about “ịgba Xmas”, a corruption of “Christmas” itself, in
which it it assumed that the letter “X” is an analogy of Christ or
Christianity, or the cross. Early Christians identified themselves in their
clandestine communication with the sign of the fish and not the cross. But
neither Jesus nor Christianity has anything to do with the lettter “X.” It
seems to me that those that introduced (it may have been introduced by one
beer-drinking fellow wanting to be hippy) were celebrants a bit intoxicated
with excitement and wanted to push the semiotics of Christmas further without
knowing it!
In a sense,
they coined another word, putting together “mas” in "Christmas" (as it were a bound/post-morpheme)
and the letter “X” in the front. Now, for those of us in symbolic logic or
mathematical logic, you know that you can use “X” to replace a site where an
option may land. “X” could be any number or anything. So, the coiners of the
term were using signification in mathematical
logic without knowing it.
These terms
show how Christmas is travelling round in people’s heads. As they travel round,
they gather cultural and attitudinal emotions. I am celebrating at the site of
these signs and drinking dark rum and making noise because Jesus has been born
in this galaxy. If you doubt it, ask the wise men from the East!
Comments