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As a child, chicken or beef did not excite me on Christmas Day. We lived in a cottage surrounded by chicken and cows. Anytime we ran out of fish, my mother pounced on a cock. At that time, the visit of the butcher meant imminent sale and within a day, Saani the butcher would send my parents a chunk of beef �to taste.� What we looked forward to eagerly on Christmas was Geisha or Pilchards in copra sauce and cooked rice. When I left to school in town, I could not understand all the hype about the slaughtering of cow for sharing on Christmas Day. Then, rice had not dominated the diet of these parts, so it was always okra soup with akple. There was, however, an aspect of a pre-Christmas meal that amused and later excited me: The young men who partook in the slaughtering and carving up � and they were many - would reserve the choice entrails for a special stew-up in a big earthenware pot. They would add some blood, hot spices and herbs. It was called gbodzomle or mpusuo. It was eaten in an environment akin to lions sharing a carcass. They would huff and howl at each other. �Buy a deodorant; no girl would approach your smelling armpit.� �Shut up; go expand the boundary of your farm.� �You too, go and mend your torn net.� It was all strategic advice veiled as genial insult. Later in life, I have observed, again with amusement, the preponderant premium that Ghanaians place on chicken as a kingly meal on Christmas, and it is all due to the pervasiveness of rice. Thus, in spite of the proliferation of fast food joints selling products of cheap frozen chicken, caged birds on the roadside for Christmas meal is a common sight. The fate of these fowls is scripted in the efficiency of the rice cooker. Yes, it is chicken stew and rice garnished in whatever form. We consume so much of it, yet the farms are not expanding to satisfy the demand. I spent my first ever Christmas outside Ghana�s shores in 1974. I had missed my return flight on VC 10 after training in the UK close to Christmas that year. So our mentor, a kind Englishman, invited me, two colleagues from Nigeria and two from Malaysia over to his house in the English countryside for a turkey meal on Christmas. The roast turkey was slightly brown and appropriately garnished. Our host cut the turkey into our plates, so sparingly and expertly that the slice came off like wood shaving from the carpenter�s plane. You could even use it to read your newspaper. After each of us had had four of such slices with vegetables, my colleagues came forward for a second helping and I followed. Then I felt I was taking in air rather than meat. I retired and so did my friends. That, after all, was the Christmas turkey lunch. I mused, �We eat chunks of meat, not paper-thin teeth teasers.� Whisky and wine in the freezing White Christmas weather promoted lively chats that I was to remember for many years. The host asked me about my plans for my family in the near future. I replied, �Build a house.� �Where�s the funding from?� �Borrow from my parents.� It was self-delusion. They were as poor as me. �No supplement from any other source?� I stuttered for an answer and the host�s background conversation could be, �I bet, the bloke has no plans.� The wife asked each of us what we would have been eating for Christmas meal back home. Chicken was invariably the answer, except I who wanted to sound funny. �Tinned fish and rice in copra oil source.� She sighed, �What you eat on Christmas demonstrates your culture and directs your strategic vision.� Our President, His Excellency John Mahama, spent this Christmas in the Middle East. It may be far-fetched to suggest that he feasted on lamb, dates and camel milk, not chicken as Ghanaians. But assuming he did? Next time, I suggest the President joins the young men of my village for gbodzomle feast for free advice, even if in the form of crude rural banter. As I learnt from our mentor, the tradition of Christmas meal was not to celebrate a grand occasion but to take a peek into the future with your countrymen who were likely to be eating the same food at the same time and entertaining the same hopes and fears. *(Author: Blame not the Darkness and Akora)