Letter from Limpopo: A houseful of excited children is enough to bring the magic of Christmas back for Thabiso Sekhula
It’s Christmas season and you won’t miss the festivities in the province. School is out and taxis are packed with little kids travelling to their parents in the city or coming back home to their grandparents. The mood is up.
By her pay day in November, my sister had already sent her share of the Christmas groceries money, a silent sign in my family that “I am sending my children over”.
And like the amateur I am, it will be another festive season where I am home with all the kids.
I must love children because my cousin is sending her two kids too. Between my sisters and me we have eight of our own, and since we are already counting 12+ heads at home for breakfast these holidays, I went and told my other cousin to bring her two as well.
I’m a sucker for family and pictures. I have recreated the same image with the kids over the years on the steps of my mother’s house since they were little.
This will be the first Christmas in four years that we are recreating it. We’ve lost so much, and with Covid 19, Christmas time hasn’t been what it should be. What’s a better instant cure for sadness than the presence of children, 15 in my case?
I would rather all my money go towards these four weeks of togetherness because it makes all of us happy. Gives us enough goodness until the next year.
I grew up as the last born with a 10-year gap between the oldest and myself. The older ones all left for varsity while I was just going to high school. Christmas holidays were always the time I could spend with all of them plus my cousins and all the kids on the street.
We would spend our days at the river and swap houses with our cousins. Wear Christmas clothes and wake up to the sun dancing on Christmas morning – although I think that was a tactic by parents to get us to wake up early and work.
My rich uncle would slaughter a cow on New Year’s Eve and send buses out to our relatives around the province to bring them over.
One time I even fell in love with a boy who had come to our neighbour’s house for a wedding for a week. I wasn’t invited to part two of the celebrations all the way in Mafikeng, so I wrote him a letter and sent it with my mother, who was part of the bridal squad taking makoti to her in-laws.
It was magic. Instant happiness in memories.
And even as I grow older, being here to experience it again is a privilege which brings that magic back, this time with my own kids and family. Let’s celebrate the traditions we have, try new ones and keep those that make us happiest.
Pictured above: The latest photo shot on the steps at home with the kids
