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New Year, Different Days
I am Nigerian. I am Yoruba. I grew up Anglican. Why I’m putting all this out on the first line will become apparent.
A Nigerian New Year Story
In my country, the New Year Celebrations are a big deal, but that’s about it for the rest of the world, isn’t it?
Well, not quite.
For us, our end-of-year anxiety starts to build up in September and reaches a crescendo on the 31st of December. There is a cultural dread associated with the ember months. Our addiction to grief makes us believe that sometimes in these last four months of the year, our chances of suffering a misfortune rise significantly. There is a place for it in our diction. It is not unusual for parents to counsel their children to travel less, or take fewer risks during this period. Dying in the dying days of an old year appears to carry greater weight on the scale of misfortune. In our prayers, we pray for safe passage through the ember months and ask for God’s mercy to cross over into the New Year.
As the year comes to an end, our collective spirituality heightens. Christmas ushers in the believer and the glutton in us — of food, adornment, joie de vivre, and religiosity, as much as our means can cater to. We hold seances to call on the spirits of the dead while listening to the same old songs. The Christian conjures the…
