It is the season of Christmas literature and fond memories

Mercantile, sublime, sentimental and searing, Christmas is a magical wonderland. The glittering Christmas trees flashing in colours as varied and beautiful as the rainbow. Jingle bells. Carols. Spectacular ribbons and coloured balloons. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Christmas is not just a holiday; it’s a time for memories and reflection. For Washington Irving, in Old Christmas, Christmas is a time for church and sweet music: “I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and

  • the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.”

Mercantile, sublime, sentimental and searing, Christmas is a magical wonderland. The glittering Christmas trees flashing in colours as varied and beautiful as the rainbow. Jingle bells. Carols. Spectacular ribbons and coloured balloons.

The air smelling of rain or a near-desperate summoning of desires to remember last Christmas’ pleasant memories, like intimacy thwarted but with desires continuing unabated.  And there is also something poignant about the Christmas story; the pregnant

mother looking for a place to lodge and finding none, the terrified shepherds in the field at night as angels flashed their otherworldly lights, the music that seemed to come from above and the baby in a manger in swaddling clothes.

Christmas is not just a holiday; it’s a time for memories and reflection. For Washington Irving, in Old Christmas, Christmas is a time for church and sweet music: “I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and

the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.”

Christmas threatens Nairobi, the populous metropolis, by turning it into a ghost town. The often raucous city takes on dream-like serenity: deserted, muted, subdued and mysterious. The haunting image of a lonely man sitting hunched on the grass at Uhuru Park.

It’s a lonesome December, a time when pathos and grief could hug with abandon in one corner as revellers flock, eat, dance and enjoy elsewhere. The I’ll Be Home for Christmas tune blaring in town is like a loud indictment to those who have ‘not gone home’.

Nostalgia bites, guilt even, as Nairobians silently sing along: “I’m dreamin’ tonight of a place I love/Even more than I usually do/And although I know it’s a long road back/I promise you/Christmas Eve will find me/Where the love light beams/I’ll be home for Christmas/If only in my dreams”!

However, Christmas is not only music. It is also literature. The season has been inspiring artists for centuries. When the Christmas tree pops up in literature, it’s gorgeously apparelled with blinking lights and sparkles.

One of the writers who does this well is Charles Dickens, who built an epic around Christmas with his ever-green A Christmas Carol.

One of the most exciting characters from the story is Ebenezer Scrooge described thus: “…He was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from

which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features... He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw

it one degree at Christmas”.

The reason for Christmas, as revealed in Christmas carols is ‘peace on earth and goodwill to man’ so it should be a time of ‘warm’ hearts that help others. However, Scrooge’s heart is ‘cold within him’; he was anti-Christmas. He doesn’t even know it is

Christmas time. “What day is it, boy?” he asks and Tiny Tim answers, “Why, it’s Christmas, sir!”.

At first, Scrooge didn’t even care it was Christmas. However, he undergoes transformation and self-redemption courtesy of three mysterious Christmas apparitions; the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas

future. Scrooge is warned of looming doom if he continues being a miser. He becomes a jovial, happy, benevolent and generous old man.

In a world of haves and have-nots like Kenya, the message of A Christmas Carol, rings true. Scrooge represents the rich who would rather throw away food than help a starving neighbour. But in this era of allegations of corruption, Scrooge also represents the greedy.

Apart from A Christmas Carol, other books for the season are Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory with its “scented acres of holiday trees”, Leo Tolstoy’s  Papa Panov’s Special Christmas with its excited children that “scurried indoors and now muffled sounds of chatter and laughter escaped from closed shutters”, Ernest Hemingway’s Christmas in Paris with its “Paris with the snow falling”, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby with its being home “after college at Christmas time” and Henry James’s Christmas in Paris, 1876 with its “I have never seen Paris so charming as on this last Christmas Day”. 

Let us enjoy the holidays; it’s the season to be jolly! Let us also share with others. However, as a country with a lot of unfinished business, after the parties, we should use the season’s magic and promise of renewal to reflect as a nation and “reboot” so we can start the year 2016 on a clean slate of caring for others and ending vices such as corruption.