Christmas as a child in Uganda

2019 Christmas, some of the kid guests.

Last year in December it was coming to eight years of not spending Christmas with my family and five years without seeing them. I know this is cliché to write about Christmas in the middle of April, but the thought just came up when I was looking through my December holiday pictures and I started to miss my family and the Christmas food.

Third term Holiday

Third term holiday is one of the longest holidays in Uganda and this happens from December to end of January or mid-January depends on what school you go to. Having gone to a boarding I used to look forward to this holiday a lot because I got to spend most of the time with my family. I would visit my paternal grandmother for some weeks and spend time with my cousins. Few days before Christmas my mum used to ask each of us what clothes we wanted (this was like our own “Christmas gift”) because in my family we never used to exchange gifts like the way it is done here in Norway. Funny thing was that we never wore these outfits until the day after New Year’s Eve 1^st January🤣.

The night before Christmas day

I remember my dad used to come back from his trips on this day. Brought a lot of food with him and we had to peel matooke (green bananas) that night and other foods that took time to be prepared so that the next morning we just put them on the stove. It was a night of tension and sharing house shores, who is going to do what the next day. Our house was full of girls, so the work went much faster when it came to cook. It was this night we decorated the Christmas tree with toilet paper, some balloons and other Christmas decorations. Don’t judge the toilet paper it looked good on the Christmas tree those days 🙌.

Christmas day 25^th December

As far as I remember we did the same routine for each Christmas every year. Cook a lot of food, listen to music, tell stories and eat like there is no tomorrow. I remember we even had competitions like “who drinks the most soda” that day 🤣, or who is going to get a lot of food and not finish it. The day was full of joy, usually had visitor (aunties and uncles) who passed by to say hi to our mum because it was the only day you would find her home.

Matooke(green bananas) fried irish potatoes, chapati, Pilau, chicken stew, G-nut sauce, Greens

New years eve was the day we all waited for, the day we took out the Christmas tree. I don’t know how this was a tradition, but every New Year’s Eve at 00:00, we used to take out the Christmas tree, light it and run on the road while dragging it around🤣. A lot of families did the same because on the road there was always a lot of people (my father never approved this though). We used to sneak out of the house  to burn the Christmas tree. The first day of the year, the day we wore our new clothes we got on Christmas 🤣🙌. We usually went to “the beach” spent  the whole day there and this was our tradition every year.

So last year when I was home for Christmas it was amazing. We still cooked a lot of food, had family and friends over and one of my aunties passed by to check on my mum. It is amazing how some things never change!