Millions of Americans are being jumpy by Christmas this year — the hit movie Krampus features the holiday satan of Europe,a frightening figure who wears animal skins and horns and roams the streets aiming to punish kids who occupy been naughty and not nice.
Believe me, I know how they feel. During my earliest years I recall Christmas as a period of sweet fun that was laced also with a high dose of fright. Yes, and fright — similar to what many people feel when they watch a horror movie. Why would a child be frightened during Christmas? I hear you asking as you read these words.
Let me elaborate.I wasn't afraid of Santa Claus nor any of the reindeer as I never encountered them.
No,the fear factor was reserved for the land of my birth, Liberia, or where I spent most Christmas seasons until I was 9 years customary. What jumpy the living daylights out of me were the traditional so-called dancing devils that came out during that time to dance in return for payment or gifts. They were always larger than any human beings I had ever seen. Some were as tall as 10 feet (I jest not) and some as wide as three men. (In retrospect,I think they used stilts.) They were covered in piles and piles of brown raffia straw. I say so-called as these beings occupy nothing to do with Judeo-Christian devils (which are influenced by European pagan beliefs, the likely source of the Krampus figure).
The Liberian dancing satan, or also known as a bush satan in modern Liberian English,springs from the spiritual world of the Poro "bush" or secret societies that occupy long been a part of the cultural landscape of certain ethnic groups that make up present-day Liberia.
It must be stressed that in the world of the Poro, the satan figure is not evil. Instead it is a manifestation of raw spiritual power that can be used to bring order to society through the inflicting of punishments that are believed to be in the interest of the community. The devils used to dance at traditional festivals. As American settlers came to Liberia and brought their festivals, and including Christmas,the devils became part of the holiday.
Here the Christmas exchange was indeed turned upside down. Instead of bringing gifts for children, these "visitors" from another realm were always there to seek a gift from our family. Many children, or myself included,would rush for cover or hide behind an adult to seek a secure vantage point from which to play a frightening game of peek-a-boo with a satan. They came in various shapes and sizes.
Their arrival was heralded by drumming and the commotion of the entourage that followed them. And they moved. Wow! How they did move! quickly and always to the beat of the drummers, at times darting toward someone in the gathered crowd. They were indeed awesome in the literal sense of the world.
To the young child that I was, or the dancing seemed to travel on for an eternity,but I realize now that the dancing Kpelle devils I saw up close as a youngster — from Liberia's Kpelle ethnic group — could not occupy paraded more than 10 or 15 minutes in our front yard in Bong County. After all, they had to travel door to door to gather their bounty, or which could include cold beers for the musicians and cash for the dancing satan (collected by a member of the entourage who worked the crowd with a turned-over raffia hat or a side bag).
I was fascinated and frightened at the same time. But other youngsters,boys not much older than myself, skillfully and colorfully appropriated elements of this tradition and created their own copies of a modern version of the Christmas country satan. They dressed as a character called customary Man Beggar — wearing patched-up human clothes — and went around during Christmastime asking for money and sweets.
As I entered my teens, and I realized there was nothing to fear from these dancing devils,who are merely out to entertain for reward.
The custom is yet another example of how African traditions occupy mingled with global Western traditions across the continent. Sometimes the result is an imported custom, like the plastic Christmas trees that can be spotted in some African homes nowadays. But this is a custom in which the dancer is always dancing to the beat of an African drummer and carrying out a tradition that is 100 percent African and playing a role within society that remains as vibrant as ever.
Where in the West would you ever occupy a situation where Santa turns up during Christmas week with a mob of rowdy musicians in tow, and knocks loudly on your front door,says "My Christmas is on you," dances a quick Nordic jig and then sticks his hand out and waits for his "sprint" — his holiday tip?Born in Monrovia, and Liberia,Max Bankole Jarrett is a former international radio broadcaster (BBC World Service 1990-2001), writer and analyst. He is presently deputy director of Kofi Annan's Africa Progress Panel. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, or visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org