BY SOLOMON DIBABA
Ethiopian Christmas also known as Genna or sometimes as Lidet meaning birth day is celebrated on the 7th of January or Tahisas 29 according to the Ethiopian calendar which follows the Julian Calendar is one of the indoor Christian holidays celebrated in Ethiopia.
Genna is so close to my family because two of my brothers who have now transited were born on the same day it is colorfully celebrated in Ethiopia. I used to get sweets and stationary materials for school because in those days Christmas denoted the end of the first semester at school.
Genna is celebrated in the midst of the harvest season with religious ceremonies at Christian churches particularly among the faithful of the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church. Genna combines religious festivities with traditional game called Yegena Chawata.
Genna is also a celebration that heralds a fasting season of more than a month practiced by the devotees of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. People tune in their appetite to meat and dairy products and would temporarily abandon vegan foods like Shiro and Ye tesome Bayiannetu or other non-meat and non-fat products during Genna keeping the protocols of COVID-19 in larger family and groups.
Ye Genna Chewata resembles some kind of traditional field Hockey differing from the European or American hockey played on ice. Even though, this traditional game is gradually subsiding in urban areas of the country, in rural areas young people are playing the game during Christmas.
The Ethiopian Traditional Sports Federation has set the rules and regulations of the game more are to be done to make the game a center of tourist attraction.
Players use sticks made out of wood called ‘Gena’ to hit a round, hard wooden ball known as ‘erur’ to play the game. Players are attired special traditional clothes and shoes to illustrate their respect for the culture.
Besides, this traditional game also shows the freedom that the youth enjoy to play in front of senior members of the community as players cry out Begena Chawata Aikotum Geta meaning the local official will not be enraged by the game or will be supportive of the traditional event.
Before starting the game on open field close by, two competing teams assign their leaders and two old men from the crowd will be appointed as referees for the game. The game mostly started in the afternoon could last until the sun sets.
According to legend, the game is started from the joy of shepherds when they heard the birth of Jesus Christ that made them to jump and throw everything that they found around them by their wooden stick.
Christmas is particularly celebrated in Lalibela among the faithful of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from within and by Ethiopians and tourists across the world.
Referring to church tradition Paul Rafael denotes that it was two shipwrecked Christian boys who introduced the faith to Ethiopia in the fourth century; they worked as slaves in the royal court but eventually became advisers to King Ezana, who spread Christianity among his people.
It is stated that Lalibela became a holy city after the capture of Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1187; since Ethiopian Christian pilgrims could no longer go there, the reigning king—Lalibela—declared the town to be a New Jerusalem.
This year, Ethiopians celebrates Genna with mixed feelings of higher expectations for peace Although TPLF has now been ousted from the political arena in the country, the remnants of its mercenaries are conducting inhuman atrocities against honest citizens.
Although Genna is supposed to be a celebration of peace and good will among its people, Ethiopians here and abroad recall the massacre conducted on the members of the North Army Command, in Mai Kadra and Humera as well as in different parts of the country.
The upcoming Genna holiday needs to be a celebration that would focus on mass mobilization for compassion to those who are displace due to ethnic conflicts and ethnic based harassments orchestrated by TPLF and its supporters abroad.
More than ever, for Ethiopia collective ascertainment of the rule of law by all citizens has now become a matter of survival not only for the current leadership but for the stability and sovereignty of the peoples of this country. A state of conflict spares nobody in the country and would one way or another affect the wellbeing of each citizen in the country. Those who are already affected need to be rehabilitated before they can kick start a stable life.
All the more, the entire public and the government and all elements of the political system should draw some decisive lessons from these conflicts and war waged on the peoples of Ethiopia.
Thousands of meetings and public consultation are useful but the taste of the pudding is in the eating. I mean to say that collective actions conducted in a spirit of accountability is the only wider strategy for ensuring peace in Ethiopia during this Genna Season and beyond.
The peoples of Ethiopia have a tradition of sharing which effectively coincides with the exchange of gifts to the vulnerable sectors of our population. I hope that this year’s Genna would be a season of unity, peace and love.
The Ethiopian herald January 3/2021
