GWOC: dispatches from the Nigerian front

31 December 2006, 1408 EST

Senan Murray of the BBC reports the gory details.

There are no Christmas decorations, the radio stations are still playing hip-hop and rap and some children recoil at an image of Santa decrying it as evil.

“His costume looks phoney and his face is strange,” says eight-year-old Ifunanya Chima when shown a picture of the benign bearded old man in his trademark red cloak with white fur trimmings.

“We prefer masquerades,” he told me referring to the traditional colourful dancing which is a big part of the festive season here.

But it gets worse.

In the village, Christmas becomes more colourful, with masquerades and dance groups taking over the village square to offer free entertainment for all.

The incorporation of masquerade into Christmas festivities shows the growing influence of traditional African religious rituals on Christianity in Nigeria.

It also shows that many Nigerians have stopped attaching great religious importance to Christmas and simply see it as a social event.

It all started, apparently, when greeters at Nigerian superstores started wishing shoppers “Happy Holidays.” Now we see the horrible fruition of the plot: Christmas celebrations marred by pagan rituals.

And yet, there might be an upside to all this. It seems that commercialization, non-traditional celebrations, and a less sectarian approach to the holiday season actually expands the appeal of Christmas.

“I celebrate Christmas because it’s a time for loads of fun,” says Ibrahim Idris, a Muslim in Abuja.

Christmas clothes take the place of Christmas gifts as excited children and adults try to outdo one another in showing off their best wear during the festive season.

There are big retreats for Nigeria’s fast-growing Pentecostal Christian sects, but these retreats sometimes look like bazaars as they throw up business opportunities for some enterprising people.

Who knew?

Filed as: global war on Christmas

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.