Greetings!
Mostly, I have celebrated the Christmas season in my home villa with family. However, this time, I am living alone, away from family. The only other time I celebrated Christmas away from home when I was still fully under my parents' care was when I spent the holiday at one of my aunt's houses while undergoing my I.T. That celebration was the worst, and according to my aunt's family, that's their tradition on Christmas day. I know you're eager to know what happened, so just chill and read on.
Early in the morning on Christmas day, we woke up around 6 a.m. as usual to take our bath and go to the shop, as our routine had always been. Breakfast and lunch were usually done at the shop. Meanwhile, before then, I didn't see any sign of chicken being bought and put in a cage, as is customary during Christmas.
I believed they were going to buy it on the spot and kill it, which would save stress since they didn't actually have any place to keep the chicken if they had bought it earlier.
When we got to the shop, my aunt's husband and I started bringing out things while my aunt went into the kitchen to make breakfast. Guess what was made? It was tea and bread as usual. Okay, I didn't fret. I just assumed it was still too early to start devouring a solid meal.
I went to church and returned around 10:00 a.m., only to meet everyone behaving like it was just a normal day. The children were busy running around, my aunt and her husband were seated or moving around attending to customers, while some of their friends, who were also customers, were seated holding bottles of beer in their hands—just like they normally did on weekends.
I waited and waited for a big Christmas meal to arrive. Maybe they had ordered something, I thought, because the place didn’t smell like rice or chicken was being cooked. But no, nothing came. By the time it was 1:00 p.m., I opened up and said I was hungry. My aunt quickly replied that I should go and make noodles to eat. The sound of that slapped my ears so hard.
"Noodles? Are we not cooking Christmas food?" I asked.
"Heheheheheh!" She laughed for about a minute while shaking her head out of amusement at how my question sounded.
"When I was announcing to you before today that I don’t usually have time to cook Christmas food on Christmas day, you thought I was joking?" she said, paused, laughed again, and continued. "Don’t worry, we’ll close early enough to go home and prepare food."
I was so shocked upon hearing that. I couldn’t believe my ears. What kind of lifestyle is that? Christmas is a day when one starts eating real food from early morning until one gets tired of eating.
Guys, we stayed eating junk until we closed around 5:30 p.m. to go home and cook. My aunt is the kind that wants company in the kitchen, so I became her assistant because her children were little. While she was pulling up those kitchen gists, I was replying absentmindedly because I was so vexed at such a Christmas tradition in their house.
We finished cooking around 8:00 p.m. or so, and that was when we finally got to eat Christmas food. They know I can't be found in their house again during Christmas day😅.
Thanks for reading.
This is my response to Hivenaija prompt of the week.
Photos used are mine
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