In a year that marked the end of tensions precipitated by two presidential elections and high octane politics, the country has every reason to celebrate Christmas.

We have innumerable blessings to count, both as individuals and as a nation. We have enough reasons to feel blessed this Christmas.

This is not to say that it will be a perfect Christmas for every one of us.

In a nation once described as that of ten million Kenyans and ten millionaires (and it has not changed much), millions of Kenyans will be forgiven for asking: What reason do I have to be merry this Christmas?

The truth is that our bad politics and consumerism culture have corroded the spirit of Christmas. As such, it is as if our Christmas is surrounded by dark shadows of thinly veiled political shenanigans and preyed on by profiteers keen to make a coin from the carnivore mood.

With every Christmas, something is lost in the original story of Christ whose birthday we celebrate.  Gone is the template of a saviour born from the humblest of backgrounds who taught that the spirit of Christmas can be, and must be summarised into three words: love one another. 

With a rapidly growing divide between the rich and the poor in Kenya, millions of Kenyans will be forgiven for thinking Christmas is a fraud; a reserve for the rich; a day when the rich flaunt their obscene wealth or pretend to care by giving handouts.

Even Christianity, which ought to lead the way in defining Christmas, is no longer seen as a moderating power that created equilibrium in life.

How else do we explain the rot in society where cruelty, corruption, immorality and cold meanness thrive side by side with fervent Christianity?  How can a people ranked highly for faithfully marking all holidays on the religious calendar still be ranked high on social ills such as graft and negative ethnicity?

Some might want to blame this on the rapidly spreading prosperity gospel that those who preach it use as a means to an end. Whoever is to blame, one thing is crystal clear: that we have millions of Kenyans out there who will be forgiven for asking: What reason do I have to be merry this Christmas?

There is no doubt that, this Christmas, some Kenyans will sleep hungry; that some mother will have nothing to give her child. It is not in doubt that thousands of parents will have a very uneasy Christmas because they are too terrified of what awaits them in January 2019 when schools open.

For thousands of youths unsure of their fate after this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary education, Christmas must be feeling like a premonition. 

It is with this hungry child; this uncertain Kenyans that we must share the spirit of Christmas.  This year’s Christmas must transcend all class, age, religion, colour or creed.

It must be about bringing down the fences we have been putting up around ourselves. It must be about restoring the faith of those that still live with bated breath, uncertain and untrusting, because years of false promises and false starts have made them permanently skeptical.

As author Charles Dickens would have put it; Christmas is that one day in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave.

Before the real meaning of Christmas dawned on him Dicken’s character, Ebenezer Scrooge, hated Christmas. The cold hearted miser thought Christmas a fraud. When his nephew wished him a merry Christmas, Scrooge retorted: What right have you to be merry?  What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

This Christmas, we must strive to prove this cold miser wrong by spreading the true joy of Christmas around, by showing streak of humanity, of faith, hope and love.

Above all, this Christmas must not be an end, but a beginning. The faith, hope and love must not go down with the sun, but must be followed up once the partying is over.