Earliest Churches and How Christmas Was First Celebrated in Anioma

Earliest Churches and How Christmas Was First Celebrated in Anioma

By Emeka Esogbue

There is no single recorded moment that can be described as the first Christmas in Anioma. Rather, what exists is a gradual historical process shaped by missionary encounters, local resistance and acceptance, and the slow indigenisation of Christianity across the Lower Niger region. Drawing from missionary records, oral traditions, and broader patterns of Christian expansion, this article reconstructs a reliable historical picture of how Christianity and by extension Christmas first arrived and took root in Anioma.

Missionary Arrival and the Birth of Christmas in Anioma

The celebration of Christmas in Anioma is inseparably tied to the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century. The first seeds of Christianity were planted through two major missionary streams: the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of the Anglican Church, operating from Onitsha, and the Roman Catholic Mission, later represented by the Society of African Missions (SMA).

From Onitsha, the CMS crossed the River Niger and extended its evangelical influence westward into Anioma communities such as Asaba, Ibusa, Ogwashi-Uku, and their neighbours. Asaba, owing to its strategic location and later emergence as a colonial headquarters between the 1880s and early 1900s, became the earliest and strongest foothold of Christianity in Anioma.

It is therefore most likely that the first organised Christmas celebrations in Anioma took place in Asaba.

Asaba: The First Christian Stronghold

Christianity was first introduced to Asaba in 1875 by the Church Missionary Society (Anglican), making it the earliest Anioma town to receive the new faith. Thirteen years later, in 1888, the Roman Catholic Mission formally established a mission station in the town under Father Carlo Zappa (SMA). That same year witnessed the first recorded Catholic Mass in Anioma, marking the beginning of organised Catholic life in the region.

At this early stage, Christianity and Christmas was entirely foreign to the people. The Anioma communities already had well-established cultural and religious festivals, and the idea of celebrating the birth of Christ was unfamiliar. As a result, early Christmas observances were modest, strictly religious, and European in character.

The first Christmas celebrations likely consisted of small church gatherings at the Asaba mission station or Catholic mission house. Missionaries introduced Christmas hymns, Bible readings, prayers, candlelight services, and occasionally distributed small gifts to children and early converts. These converts, often dressed in their finest traditional attire, gathered to commemorate what they were taught as the birth of the “Son of God,” a concept that was entirely new to many.

Resistance, Conflict, and Gradual Acceptance

In most Anioma communities, Christianity initially met strong resistance. Converts were often viewed with suspicion, and in some cases openly rejected by their families and communities.

A notable example is Ibusa (Igbuzo). Despite repeated missionary attempts, the community did not formally accept Christianity until 1898, following the Anglo-Ibusa War. The chiefs and elders resisted the new religion, and even after its introduction, holders of the Obi title were traditionally forbidden from worshipping in the church.

This cultural tension came to a head with Obi Augustine Ajufo, whose acceptance of Christianity clashed sharply with established customs. He was excommunicated by his people and forced to relocate to the newly established St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, where he eventually lived and was buried. The church itself, founded in 1898, became Ibusa’s first Christian institution and a symbol of the difficult transition between tradition and the new faith.

Expansion Across Anioma

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Christianity continued to spread steadily:

Illah witnessed the completion of its first Catholic church in 1904.

Issele-Uku evolved not merely as a parish centre but later emerged as the seat of what became a Catholic diocese, reflecting its early and sustained missionary importance.

Onicha-Olona experienced early missionary visits:

Rev. Fr. Humel arrived in 1890, Rev. Carlo Zappa followed in 1891, and Rev. Fr. John Frigerio arrived in 1898, remaining until 1920.

According to the community's historian, Felix Ifeanyi Nwabuokei, Christianity reached Onicha-Olona around 1894, initially through the Church Missionary Society. Archival records preserved by his father, Erasmus Nduka Nwabuokei, personal secretary to Obi Nwachi Odor, indicate that the first church building, Our Lady of Lourdes, was constructed in 1910 by Fr. John Frigerio at Ogbeobi village. Sadly, the structure was later abandoned, collapsed, and disappeared, an irreplaceable historical monument lost to neglect. The present church site was later relocated to Abuanor, mirroring a similar loss of early church structures in Ibusa.

In Akwukwu-Igbo, CMS missionaries conducted a prayer meeting as early as 1894. Oral tradition recounts how Chief Monye Ugbodu from Onicha-Olona, upon attending a prayer meeting in Akwukwu-Igbo, challenged the missionaries for bypassing his community. His insistence led them to relocate the evening prayer to Onicha-Olona the same day, effectively introducing Christianity to both communities almost simultaneously. By 1907, Anglican missionaries had established a primary school with church activities in Akwukwu-Igbo, and by 1910, a Catholic church building existed there as well. Similarly, in 1904, CMS School, now known as Iyi-Ogbe Primary School was opened in Onicha-Olona. 

Christmas as a Church Event

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Christmas in Anioma remained strictly a church affair. It lacked the communal feasting and cultural colour known today. However, as Christianity gained acceptance across Ibusa, Ogwashi-Uku, Issele-Uku, and neighbouring towns, Christmas gradually became integrated into local culture.

Church worship began to blend with communal feasting, drumming, and dance after Mass. Families slaughtered goats or chickens and shared food in a spirit reminiscent of indigenous festivals such as Iwaji and Ifejioku. Children dressed in fine clothes moved from house to house, visiting relatives, receiving food and small monetary gifts, strengthening kinship bonds and communal love.

By the 1920s and 1930s, mission schools introduced Christmas pageants and nativity plays, helping children and converts internalise the story of Christ’s birth and embedding Christmas more deeply into Anioma social life.

From “White Man’s Festival” to Communal Identity

At the time of the earliest celebrations, many traditionalists dismissed Christmas as a “white man’s festival.” Yet curiosity, music, gifts, and the communal spirit gradually drew people in. By the mid-twentieth century, Christmas had become one of the most eagerly awaited events in Anioma, a season of faith, reunion, joy, and generosity.

Christmas in Anioma Today

Today, Christmas in Anioma across Ibusa, Asaba, Issele-Uku, Illah, Okpanam, Akwukwu-Igbo, Onicha-Olona, and beyond is both deeply religious and richly cultural. What began as a small missionary observance has evolved into a grand home-coming season.

Families return from cities and abroad, houses are opened, goats and chickens are slaughtered not merely for food but as symbols of abundance and thanksgiving, and visitors are freely fed. Hospitality defines the season.

Christmas in Anioma is no longer just the celebration of Christ’s birth; it is a reaffirmation of identity, unity, and belonging, a season when villages come alive and the people, once again, remember who they are.