ABSTRACT

This article explores masquerade celebrations among the Christian and Igbo Traditional believers. The study investigates the Igbo masquerading system and Santa Claus (Father Christmas) and discovered that there were no reservations around participation, despite Christianity maintaining that the former is a pagan and fetish practices. Many reasons emerged for participation in the Igbo masquerading system: attachment to Igbo culture, the quest to belong to the community/the question of identity, the communitarian aspect of masquerade celebrations, the challenges of enculturation, cultural revivalism, and the commercialization of masquerades. Contrary to early (Western) missionaries’ prediction that Christianity would erode the Igbo people’s ‘fetish’, masquerades, the Western Santa Claus (Father Christmas) is being promoted against the Igbo masquerading system. However, despite this misrepresentation of Igbo cultural heritage, traditional masquerading has kept thriving in Igboland, perpetuated by the Christian youth in a bid to keep their cultural practices alive. This indicates that Christianity, despite its longstanding presence, has not succeeded in curtailing this growing phenomenon. As a qualitative research, the researchers adopted the primary and secondary sources of data collection and the culture area approach for data analysis. The study recommends an integration of Igbo traditional and Christian religious beliefs in analyzing the astrophysical cosmology of masquerades through mutual dialogue of synthesis and hybridization of the good elements of each of the cultures, rather than using extreme acts of mutual extinction.