Kenyan Christmas

Nationality: Kenyan
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2016
Primary Language: English

Description: “We celebrate Christmas with a Christmas tree. It depends where Christmas is for us, but we usually just go to grandparents house. As a family we all celebrate Christmas in the family home. And then go to church. It’s just a service. We talk about Christmas. They give the Christmas story. We don’t do a candlelight service though.”

2. My friend has heard of these things because he has experienced them first hand.

3. I walked into his dorm room and asked him if he could tell me the way that Kenyans celebrate Christmas.

4. I realized afterward that this may have been a bit of a stupid question. Christmas isn’t exactly a Kenyan holiday. The main reason that they probably celebrate it is because they’re trying to conform to the growing global western culture. However, it still speaks a lot about where they are at in their lives as a culture. The fact that they are moving toward the globalized western perspective is definitely notable. In fact, it’s even worth saying that they’re moving away from their traditional and historic culture as well. These are ideas and beliefs that have been grounded within thousands upon thousands of years of thought and are now beginning to drain away.