Happy Christmas from Jo’burg

Once upon a time, in the desolate Great Karoo, my father pointed out a distant line of bluegum trees marking the route Father Christmas was likely to follow when he came to deposit gifts under our Christmas tree. I was around four at the time, but even then I sensed something odd about Christmas in Africa. The cards on our mantelpiece depicted snow, but we’d never seen such a thing. Our windows were shuttered against heat, not icy blizzards. Even our Christmas tree was not a real Christmas tree, just a bough hacked off a thorn tree and draped with shreds of tinsel. But the four-year-old is a foolish creature, so I sat there for hours, peering hopefully into the sun-blackened immensity, waiting for Santa Claus to materialise. He didn’t, and Christmas was never quite the same again.

That was sad, because there was initially something quite magical about the strange goings-on depicted in Christmas carols — holly, ivy, reindeer, sleighs, the snowfield outside King Wenceslas’s window and candles glowing in the manger.