{"id":824,"date":"2015-11-30T19:50:02","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/?p=824"},"modified":"2015-11-30T19:51:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:51:10","slug":"why-christmas-is-the-worst-day-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/2015\/11\/why-christmas-is-the-worst-day-of-the-year","title":{"rendered":"Why Christmas is the Worst Day of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Singto Saro-Wiwa<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a tale of betrayal, and one I will not easily forget. It was to be a pre-Christmas outing of epic importance: first, Mummy was taking me to Leventis, which in 1988, had all the appeal of FAO Schwarz to a Nigerian six-year-old who had never been to FAO Schwarz, and then we were going to see Father Christmas, a global celebrity I could not believe was coming to Africa, much less humble Ikeja.<\/p>\n

For days, I peppered her with questions: who had told Father Christmas about Nigeria? Wouldn\u2019t he be hot in that outfit? Could we live in Leventis? She answered with saint-like patience: he was omniscient, he was looking forward to the warmth after months at the North Pole, and no. Satisfied, I studied Saint Nick\u2019s likes and dislikes in my Enid Blyton collection. I prepared my list. I waited with eager impatience.<\/p>\n

The cool, radiant aisles at Leventis were filled with toys as far as the eye could see. Imported toys that mimicked real life assets in loud, attractive colours: houses, cars, Caucasian babies. Mum let me run amok, touching and wishing out loud, and when I asked her for a red plastic cooking set, she said Father Christmas would bring it to me himself. What a guy! And before I knew it, it was time to meet jolly Kris Kringle himself.<\/p>\n

The details are not important. But my meet-up with the all-star was an epic failure. Instead of the pale skin and rosy cheeks I expected, his were gaunt and the colour of mud. His \u2018beard\u2019 was a poorly-constructed cotton fabrication. And the toys! What kind of man gives a girl child an all-green plastic doll with no parts that move? Not the hair, not the arms \u2013 nothing!<\/p>\n

As I shuffled away from the impostor, my little shoulders were heavy with disappointment and I remember looking at my mother for the first time withdistrust. She said he was coming from the North Pole. She lied to me? It was all a huge scam and she was in on it, because I knew that Negro Santa had no taste and wouldn\u2019t know the first thing about how to get to Leventis.<\/p>\n

That Christmas Day was bittersweet. I got my cooking set but the magic of Christmas was lost to me forever. My mother was exposed as a humbug and Ms Blyton, a mendacious scoundrel. To this day, I cannot muster up any enthusiasm for the holiday: the twinkly lights, the lilting music, the good cheer\u2014they converge to mock my innocence and fill me with bitterness. My heart goes out to the Grinch; he alone would understand my pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Singto Saro-Wiwa   This is a tale of betrayal, and one I will not easily forget. It was to be a pre-Christmas outing of epic importance: first, Mummy was taking me to Leventis, which in 1988, had all the appeal of FAO Schwarz to a Nigerian six-year-old who had never been to FAO Schwarz, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}