{"id":13880,"date":"2017-10-30T02:12:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T06:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/verastic.com\/?p=13880"},"modified":"2017-10-30T01:13:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T05:13:15","slug":"nigerians-celebrating-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/social\/nigerians-celebrating-halloween.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Nigerians Celebrating Halloween?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tomorrow is Halloween, and every year, I have the same conversation with myself: what is Halloween? And will I ever celebrate it? I&#8217;ve been living in America for most of my life, and I am yet to celebrate Halloween. However, I&#8217;m used to it. I know what day it is, and I am used to the pumpkins and the aisles of candy and the orange rights and the scary costumes. It&#8217;s America, so I know what to expect.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13884\" style=\"width: 760px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13884\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13884\" src=\"https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Halloween.jpeg\" alt=\"Halloween\" width=\"750\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Halloween.jpeg 750w, https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Halloween-300x212.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-13884\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A glowing Jack O Lantern in adark mist Forest on Halloween&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But what is going on with Nigeria these days? I&#8217;m talking about the Nigerians in Nigeria. Why are they celebrating Halloween? Also related: why are Nigerians having Black Friday sales???&nbsp; What is going on?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As I get older, I become more and more aware of how much of the western culture we appropriate in Nigeria. And it sucks because it&#8217;s rarely ever the good things.&nbsp; We don&#8217;t copy their political order, or their attempt at fairness, or their government&#8217;s efficiency. No, we go for the Halloween celebrations and everything else that does not concern us.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While having this conversation with Igwe, he brought up a fascinating point, which is that while the Nigerians who celebrate Halloween are happy to do so even when they don&#8217;t know what the heck they&#8217;re celebrating, the same people would be unlikely to dance with masquerades or go to an event that celebrates something &#8220;traditional&#8221; about Nigeria &#8212; because you know, that would be demonic and diabolical. But if it&#8217;s coming from Obodo Oyibo, then it must be the good kind of demonic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/verastic.com\/social\/fellow-nigerians-celebrate-halloween.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>I wrote about Halloween<\/strong><\/a> four years ago, and in that post, I questioned the origin of the celebration and the current meaning of the celebration. There are many theories out there about the origin of Halloween and its present-day meaning, and I am still torn about it. Well, I have no intention of celebrating it, but what do I do when Ada Verastic starts going to school? I&#8217;m hoping I&nbsp;can find a middle ground that works for me.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re a Nigerian in Nigeria, I&#8217;m really curious about what you celebrate when you celebrate Halloween?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow is Halloween, and every year, I have the same conversation with myself: what is Halloween? And will I ever celebrate it? I&#8217;ve been living in America for most of my life, and I am yet to celebrate Halloween. However, I&#8217;m used to it. I know what day it is, and I am used to<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/social\/nigerians-celebrating-halloween.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_14738191_14738191":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[560],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-13880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-social","tag-halloween","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Are Nigerians Celebrating Halloween? 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