The flood tide that is the Christmas season meant travelling upcountry, family gatherings, cooking different meals or cooking meals differently, eating together, and winding down the year in the warmth of family for many Kenyans as they grew up.
These are traditions that for generations, typified Christmas. With every generation taking them up and passing them down further. But those living and working in countries miles away, them that can’t travel home for the holidays, it is a season of longings and nostalgia, fond memories of home elevated by a global-scale celebratory mood, and reinvention.
What does Christmas look like for young Kenyans living abroad and how do they compensate for the distance and warmth of family?
Nothing prepared 30-year-old Faith Wambui for her first Christmas away from family. Early 2022, Faith left Kenya for Melbourne Australia seeking space to breathe, to grow, to think freely.
Faith Wambui Kariuki, 30, Environmental Management Specialist, near the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, July 2025.
Photo credit: Pool
“I remember waking up and realising everyone had somewhere to go except me,” she says. “People who had been here longer had families. I didn’t. I felt so lonely and so quiet inside. I missed moments I took for granted at home.”
In Kenya, Christmas for Faith had always been a simple: go to church with her mother, go back home to prepare special food and enjoy the laughter of cousins. It was a sense of belonging she didn’t need to negotiate.
In Australia, the festive season and more specifically Christmas Day, came with its many variations. Unlike what she’d been accustomed to, Melbourne does not sleep because it is Christmas.
“In healthcare for example, people pick up extra shifts, it is a season to make extra money. Many friends work during this season and plans however tentative, don’t materialise because people are busy and with no sense of urgency when it comes to the commemoration of the day. You sit there wondering whether you chose the right life. You question if your family misses you the way you miss them.”
This has forced Wambui to adapt over the years through building her own community—a “family” of fellow migrants who gather when schedules allow, sometimes not even on Christmas Day itself.
“I learned that Christmas isn’t about the date or even the decorations that comes with it. It’s about the people around you. Here we celebrate when everyone is free—maybe on the 27th, maybe in January. And that’s okay.”
Even with this compensation, there is a sense of loss that she carries on her shoulders heavily.
“You can’t replicate Kenyan chapatis here. And I miss the noise—the talking, the laughter. Here, you’re celebrating with people you’ve known for a few years. There are things you can’t talk about the same way.”
This sense of loss is aggravated by time difference between Kenya and Australia which is 8 hours ahead. This means she starts celebrating Christmas earlier and by the time it is Christmas in Nairobi, she is too tired to be awake.
“Sometimes I wait for Kenya to reach the 25th to send messages, then I sleep and forget. “It makes me feel the distance in my bones. My daughter is the most affected. Many times when I wake up the next day and it is no longer Christmas Day for me, it feels weird to say Merry Christmas.”
Faith’s way of reclaiming the warmth, food and noise that lives in the season back at home is in reinventing and recreating ‘home’ moments in her house and around her.
“I cook Kenyan food or if we are meeting with the Melbourne family, we do it at scale, we listen to music that reminds us of home, dress like we would at home—anything that says, ‘this is our new home away from home.’”
Thousands of kilometres away in Japan, 25-year-old Upendo Nice Baraza lives in a completely different reality even though the emotion remains the same.
The English literature teacher moved in March 2024, landing in a country where Christmas is more of a commercial spectacle than a religious or social holiday.
“Japan doesn’t recognise Christmas the way we do. People work, shops open and meetings happen. It’s business as usual and this was quite a shocker for me,” says Upendo.
Growing up, Christmas for Upendo was a cluster of village trips, Salvation Army church presentations, singing competitions, and cousins running around in new clothes.
Even as these traditions faded much later, Christmas still meant family—even if it was at home planting vegetables or sharing meals. The mood for the season has always been for Upendo, family centered. Living in Japan has disrupted all she thought Christmas represented.
Her first Christmas forced her into a question she had never asked herself: What does Christmas mean when your environment does not acknowledge it? “I walked outside for 30 minutes and didn’t see a single person. No music, no noise, no family preparing food. I kept asking myself—is it really Christmas?”
All was not lost as the country has its own odd charms. “KFC is the Christmas meal. People queue for hours.”
As a diasporan, she feels the absence of family more acutely—even though her family in Kenya no longer celebrates Christmas as consistently as before.
“The distance makes you reach out more,” she says. “It makes you imagine you’re missing something—even when you aren’t.”
Like Wambui, Upendo’s longing makes her seek out a community. “Now I host friends who are African or Kenyan. We try to recreate a Kenyan Christmas—food, laughter, familiarity. It’s not the same, but it’s ours.”
Upendo Nice, 25, English Literature Teacher, at her residence in Tokyo, Japan, November 2025.
Photo credit: Pool
What she misses the most? “The weather. The warmth. The aroma of chapati frying in every homestead. A whole season of celebration. The shows, the music, the chaos. Christmas here is cold and quiet. If you’re not careful, the day will pass without you noticing.”
For these Kenyans living in the diaspora Christmas is a deliberate act not just an inherited rhythm of culture. You choose your family. You create your traditions. You build what you miss and make do with what is available. You treasure time and spend it wisely. And sometimes—like Wambui and Upendo—you spend the day simply wondering whether it is Christmas at all.
For Benjamin Ogutu, who grew up in Nairobi, Christmas was always predictable in the best way. The 29-year-old multimedia technician loved reconnecting with family and the long hours of road travel to the countryside to meet relatives. “ As early as November every year, I’d be getting ready to usher in the festivities whose step-by-step process I could easily predict.”
He left Kenya in 2023 and now works in London. The way he observes the holidays today is vastly different from what the season meant to him for most of his life. “Nothing prepares you for your first Christmas abroad. You suddenly realise how much of your holiday identity was tied to place and family.”
The first shock was the weather. In Kenya, December is typically hot and vibrant. London, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. “The season here is very cold, it gets dark early, and everyone seems to retreat quietly to their spaces.” Although the London streets are heavily decorated, he still feels something is missing. “The energy here feels a little more contained—maybe even private. In Kenya, Christmas is a season. In London, it’s just a day.”
The distance from family amplifies everything. “I didn’t realise until I relocated that just having people around was such a privilege. When I became an adult, I thought children running around the compound—making noise, doing what kids do—was a disturbance. How I’d wish for such moments right now!”
To cope, he has begun building his own traditions while maintaining what he can from home. “Nyama choma takes the crown. Though I must add—nyama choma is only good if you taste it in Kenya. There’s just something, I don’t know what it is, but I think home makes food taste better.” He spends part of his Christmas break preparing the dishes he grew up with. “Sometimes we share with other Kenyans living here. It brings back some of the fond memories we have from home.”
He has also become more intentional about building and being part of a community. “Your friends—the people you work with—become your family here. We make deliberate plans to meet and catch up. Unlike home, it’s not guaranteed that because we’re approaching the end of the year, I’ll naturally meet people. Here, we make plans, share food, stories, and memories more deliberately. Everyone brings a piece of their childhood Christmas to the table.” These gatherings recreate the sense of belonging he accessed so effortlessly in Kenya.
The worst thing one can do, he says, is spend the holiday alone. “Loneliness becomes more intense during the season. But when you sit in a room full of people who also miss home, you feel seen.”
Two Christmases abroad have allowed him to make peace with the evolution of the holiday. “I’ve realised Christmas won’t look the same every year—and that’s okay. I’ve also accepted that home is no longer one place. It’s a mix of where I came from and where I am right now.”
Until London, he never fully appreciated the chaos of Christmas in Kenya—the noise, the movement, the family congestion. Now, he misses it deeply. “Those things define the season. Watching and being part of the ‘great urban–rural migration’ is one of the things I miss the most.”
