Why do I not smell this Christmas?

Christmas used to be fun! It no longer is. If I say that among a group of young children I am sure they will shout, “Uncle Phillip doesn’t know what he is talking about…” A more cynical group of that lot might just shout, “With what this uncle is saying it looks like he’s getting past his sell-by-date.” Aha! May be the last one is the correct one. I am getting past it. What I used to enjoy, I no longer enjoy. Could this really be true? That I can’t see the fun in Christmas anymore?

I don’t think that is really the case. I think there is a lot of fun in Christmas still. It is just that this year I can’t see a lot of it around. Or better still, it seems like it’s crawling its way to us, unlike in the past when it used to be all in our faces, everywhere we go (and MTN wasn’t born then)! It is making me ask, what is really happening? The other day I asked my neighbour if she’d noticed that the harmattan hadn’t come this year, even as we head dangerously close to Christmas (noooo you, I didn’t exactly put it like that! I mean, I didn’t use ‘dangerously close’). She said the world was truly changing, in reference to all the talk about climate change and the impact it is having on the world. This year alone, the world has witnessed more rainfall than it had done in the past. As a result, there have been unusual weather conditions, including flooding, in Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa, including Nigeria.

If the weather is joining forces with other factors to make the imminent coming of Christmas not to be smelt or felt by many, then it only goes to show how times are changing. There had been some information circulating about the possibility of the world ending, even before you had read this. So if you are reading this, it is either that it didn’t happen, as some people wanted it to, or that you made it and that this paper is being circulated wherever it is you have landed; which is really a remarkable thing for both yourself as an indulgee and the newspaper, as a paper of immense quality.

It is interesting that those of us in Lagos are not getting a taste of the harmattan, even though some years ago, it used to cause a serious change in the atmosphere that made it very clear that we are now drawing the year to a final close, signposted by Christmas and all the songs that you hear being played across the country. Maybe the real evidence of this lack of a ‘Christmassy’ atmosphere, apart from the harmattan not coming home to roost (excuse the cliché), can be found in the fact that we are not hearing all those lovely Christmas carols that used to rend the air, everywhere we went, when I was much younger.

But the carols didn’t only just fill my ears when I was a young school boy. I did hear carols all over the place, walking on the streets of Lagos, starting out as a young financial journalist and having the Broad Street, Marina, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Customs Street axis of Lagos Island as core work area. Carols were the music of choice, which those who sold cassettes, records wanted to play as people loved to hear them and bought them as seasonal purchases. Something is whispering in my ears that as a follower of Bob Dylan, I ought to know that, ‘Times, they are a’changing’. 

And that’s really true, if we go by what we see around us. People are no longer buying Christmas carols. At least not the way they used to buy them. Or put better still, people are no longer listening to carols in Nigeria. Carols don’t do it for them anymore. But the real reason for that is that the music scene in Nigeria has changed tremendously. People’s tastes have also changed a great deal. This has especially been helped by that fact that the quality of music produced in the country has grown tremendously and people are identifying with this quality of music that is coming out. So, even though Christmas is here, the carols are often foreign and Nigerians are settling into their own. It would be nice to see though, if some creative musician will attempt a Nigerian Christmas carol. This will have to be carol that would come in the mode of what they have done with the Nigerianisation of hip pop, R&B, pop music and the rest. It would really be interesting to see whether that is possible, but also whether it can be done in such a way that can draw the attention of Nigerians.

Besides all this might just also be the fact that you can not discountenance what Francois Bayart called the ‘politics of the belly’ as another major factor in the whole equation. I use this loosely, safely far removed from the argument that Bayart offers. But when people are busy trying to eke out a living, it has every chance of affecting how they view times and seasons, Christmas or not! Those of us who work in the media have a way of weighing up what’s going on in the economy around this time. We know things have not been the same since 2008 when they began to scare all of us with this talk of a financial meltdown. There are many people still hiding under this cacophony of a meltdown, even when they have really started ‘melting up’, they like to cover up and think the rest of us are stupidly blind, that we can’t see that they are smiling to the bank on a daily basis.

It’s like those people who are busy upgrading network and it seems like they actually will stay on it until Armageddon meets us here. We are not seeing improvements that the upgrading is bringing, yet it goes on and on… a clear sign that it is, indeed, ‘until thy kingdom come’! We will wait. And we are waiting. At least one thing that you are sure of as a result of this is that as the Christmas hits town next week, notwithstanding the network you are on, you are not going to enjoy your phone-mass; and that’s because the phone companies will make sure that you do not! This is truly a shame, really.

And if I say I do not smell this Christmas, it is not that I have lost my sense of smell. My nose is still active and can smell from far, far away, any smell that is nice and sweet. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of sweet and nice smell this year. The year has really taken its toll, necessitating harder work from me and the team that put this paper together. I guess under this kind of circumstances your nose stops recognizing sweet and nice smells. When you are exhausted, almost feeling drained, everything gets clouded and the nose twitches and smells nothing! So, to all of you, wonderful indulgees, a very Merry Christmas!

By: PHILLIP ISAKPA