The manner in which people celebrate Christmas has changed a lot from when I grew up.
During the 1980s, I always got excited when Christmas was around the corner, because I was going to see my cousins and nephews again after a whole year.
For my family, it was a time of getting together and sharing food and wearing new clothes.
When the school closed for the December holidays, we always began to prepare for Christmas.
We washed the house’s windows and curtains and swept the streets.
Those who used firewood, began to collect more so they did not struggle during the week of Christmas until New Year.
I always accompanied my mother to the bush to get different types of soil to decorate the mud house and cow dung to decorate the floors.
From 20 December every year, all the fathers who used to work far away from home like Johannesburg, will be starting to return home and that was the time that we ate lots of sweets that we shared with other families and neighbours.
We also knew that when our fathers come back home, we would eat bread with jam.
My late uncle had a house in Daveyton and used to put his children on a train and come back home with them.
When they arrived, everyone wanted to be around them because they were from Johannesburg and always wore more beautiful clothes than us.
On 24 December, the last group of fathers would be returning home from Johannesburg and other areas.
My father used to arrive home when all the kids were asleep and only my mother and grandmother waited up for him.
Waking up in the morning, my sister was usually the one who told me that my father had arrived during the night.
After seeing my school report, he would order that I be given my new clothes.
Mothers and older sisters began to bake scones using the ground oven or requesting permission from those who had stoves, especially the rich families, to bake on 23 December.
These would only be eaten on Christmas Day.
Some families made vetkoek.
Those who baked scones or vetkoek, also shared them with other families and neighbours.
We walked 30 to 40 kilometres to buy the baking ingredients from an Indian shop called Ha-Khambana.
On Christmas Eve, we had a night vigil and some people attended the night church service where they waited for Jesus Christ to be born.
Those children who did not go to church, walked the streets singing and playing until midnight.
My sister always woke us up to watch the sun rising, because the belief was that it dances three times when it rises on Christmas Day.
I was always the last to wake up and never saw it though.
We bathed as early as 6am on Christmas Day and everyone, from the grandparents to the smallest, wore new clothes and shoes.
It never mattered what brand of clothes or shoes you were wearing, as long as the clothes were new.
At times they bought us bigger sizes so that they last longer.
Women made hairstyles with Sheen or Perm and men had a German cut.
Breakfast consisted of the vetkoek or scones with tea.
Lunch comprised rice, meat, tomato sauce, beetroot and mayonnaise with Oros juice and Sweet Aid mixed with water.
We never had the luxury of sitting around a table to enjoy our Christmas lunch, and always enjoyed our meals under the tree.
My grandmother also used to make custard and jelly which my father bought though we did not have a fridge.
The custard was not a problem to set, but she had to use extra gelatin for the jelly to set.
In the evening, we ate the left overs of the lunch, and that was the end of another Christmas.
We never sang Christmas carols or saw a Father Christmas.
