do Liberians believe in Santa?

I don’t think so. I’ve done some asking around and received mostly blank stares and responses of confusion. Being ‘witched’ – yes; a fat man in a red suit delivering presents – not so much! But as a mainly Christian country (small Muslim populations are found mostly away from the coast, in the interior) they do celebrate Christmas – a less consumer-based Christmas, but still. My neighbours have a string of lights in their front window; they look nice blinking happily on evenings when they use their generator. Many people give gifts to friends and family, in fact I’ve had a couple people offer that they will ‘’give me Christmas’’ – I’ve tried to politely decline these offers. So next week I will indeed be celebrating in local ways. Later this week Nelly and I will go into town to buy our ‘Christmas clothes’ – she anticipates getting a whole outfit, on my budget I’m aiming for just a new shirt. It’s my understanding that on Christmas Eve we will do nothing specially, we’ll actually avoid travelling anywhere because car business will be very hard and super expensive. On Christmas day the girls will make a soup early in the day (it may involve slaughtering our own country chicken – this still makes me uncomfortable) and then in the early afternoon we’ll head to the beach! After being at the beach for the holiday, celebrating as true Liberians, we will come home to change into these new clothes. I’m still fuzzy on where we will go in our fancy duds, but I’m sure it will prove to be a good story!