Getting in touch with your roots this Christmas

"We're kicking off our fun old fashioned family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape, and select that most important of Christmas symbols," Clark Griswold. This is and will most likely be our wave this Christmas season, as we pack up and desert the humdrum cities to follow the magic path leading to our ancestral land, origin, history, culture, and behold our roots.

As has been the norm among the people of Africa, as well as the entire human race that believes in the little one born this festive season, Christmas is not just an event that brings merry, but a period that brings everyone together. When every step we make towards our hometowns to reconnect with family seems more beautiful and feels softer than the previous.

We majorly look forward to Christmas to revisit family traditions, childhood friends, and memories. Recollections of 'hide and seek' games around creaky edifices that have turned ghostly over time. The swimming episodes in the same rivers that have stood the test of time, defining a village upbringing that most of us seem to have repressed in efforts to embrace city life. Yet, Christmas helps us to travel back in time, and relish some of the most entwined sentiments.

We all have diverse origins, cultures, religions, and our roots are sundry. What gives us the zeal to travel to our turfs differ. Nevertheless, we can almost all agree that there's nothing as heart-stirring during Christmas as that reunion with a people and a place you haven't seen in a long time. It's a moment that arouses emotions of love, appreciation, generosity, and thankfulness. The sounds of Christmas carols in the village churches, the gatherings of small children playing around in the compounds; the moos, cackles, barks, and meows from the farm animals all make the setting complete.

Whatever your travel plans for this Christmas are, whether a trip to some exotic destination of your dream, or a visit to your ancestral home to get in touch with your roots, I wish you a hap- hap- happiest Christmas.