On the night of December 23rd, the whole of Jabi Estate, where a high profile Christmas event was scheduled for dawn was asleep except one person.
Zara Idogei, a 27-year-old event decorator, was standing in the middle of the road barefoot, holding a frying pan like a weapon. And she was chasing Father Christmas… literally.
The man, fully dressed in a red suit, fake beard in place, sack over his shoulder—was sprinting down the quiet street while Zara ran after him, shouting:
“Thief! Thief wey wear Father Christmas cloth!”
If anyone had opened their window, they would have seen a mad looking young woman in shorts and a tank top, puffed hair and one missing slipper, charging at a frightened, pot-bellied Santa.
Only ten minutes earlier, Zara had stepped outside the event venue within the estate to start her early morning decoration for a wealthy client’s Christmas breakfast party. The contract was big, her rent depended on it and December had already shown her shege. She had just set up her ladder and opened the boxes she stored outdoors when she noticed a shadowy figure in red bending behind her gate.
She stared in confusion, trying to understand what the person was doing—until it hit her.
The man was stealing her entire decoration kit. Ribbons, lights, metallic angels, artificial snow, rechargeable lanterns—items worth more than her generator.
That was how the chase started.
After five full minutes, Santa tripped over a pothole and fell. Zara, panting like someone who had just wrestled a masquerade, stood over him and raised her frying pan, ready to beat the living daylight out of him.
He raised his hands quickly.
“Madam abeg! Nor hit me! Make I explain!”
“Explain wetin?” she snapped. “That you’re the kind of Father Christmas that steals instead of giving?”
He swallowed hard. “My madam never pay me since August. My pikin dey hospital. I just… I needed money.”
Zara paused.
He removed the beard. What stood before her was not a criminal but a tired man—exhausted, embarrassed and desperate.
For a moment, her anger wrestled with compassion. Then she sighed and dropped the frying pan.
“Oya stand up. Return my things first.”
He obeyed immediately. But as Zara collected the box from him, something about the way his hands shook troubled her. She turned back to him.
“What hospital is your child in?”
“Wuse General. He needs blood tests and I don’t have anybody left to borrow from.”
Zara wasn’t rich but she knew hopelessness. She had tasted it many times herself. So she made a very un-Zara decision.
“Follow me,” she said. “If you help me finish this decoration before 6 am., I will pay you enough for the test.”
His eyes widened. “You will help me?”
“Well,” she shrugged, “at this point, it’s the least I can do.”
Two hours later, the client arrived—a well known Abuja businessman who also served as a Special Adviser to a Senator. He stepped into the decorated space, took a slow look around and suddenly froze.
“Who is that Santa?” he asked sharply.
Before Zara could respond, the man rushed forward and grabbed Santa’s face with both hands.
“Emmanuel?! Is this you?!”
They stared at each other like ghosts.
Emmanuel—the Santa was his childhood friend, the one who had disappeared fifteen years earlier after investing everything he had in a business that collapsed. Ashamed, broken and abandoned by many—including his wife, Emmanuel had quietly faded from everyone’s life.
The special adviser pulled him into a tight embrace. Even Zara felt tears sting her eyes.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked, his voice breaking. “All these years you’ve been suffering?”
Zara stood there, clutching a ribbon, watching two grown men cry without shame.
Within minutes, the special adviser turned to his driver.
“Go to Wuse General Hospital. Pay everything for the boy. Every single thing.”
Then he faced Emmanuel.
“You start work immediately. You’ll head the new welfare unit in my constituency.”
Finally, he turned to Zara.
“And you, young lady, you’re decorating every event I hold next year.” He paused. “And you’re charging double.”
Zara nearly fainted.
Emmanuel’s son recovered. Zara’s business exploded and by the following year, she had so many bookings that she had to hire staff.
Emmanuel never stopped being grateful. He often told anyone who cared to listen that a woman with a frying pan gave him a second chance at life when everyone else had walked away.
On Zara’s next birthday, Emmanuel showed up with a gift—a full set of shiny new frying pans. They both burst into laughter when she opened it. It became their inside joke, a reminder of the night everything changed.
Each time Zara saw Emmanuel and his now healthy, hefty son waving happily, she smiled.
That particular Christmas was her best ever because she got her Christmas miracle —one that started with a fake Santa, a stolen box of decorations and one angry woman holding a frying pan.
