Of course, Christmas (the celebration of Christmas) today with all its technological time-saving innovations in communication, transportation, in the kitchen, laundry room etc. will be different from Christmas of yesteryear.
Literature was there to record the times and here are a few examples of how some of our writers described those Christmases at various times and in various places.
S. E. Wills our first notable versifiers was the first ‘to specialise in depicting local life’. In his poem, ‘Christmas in the Tropics’, written in 1907, this was how he described Christmas. This poem sets the tone of the article comparing Christmas in the Tropics to Christmas in the Temperate Zone.
What jostling hosts of memories the name of Christmas starts,
Remembrances that rush from out our minds right to our hearts,
With sweet anticipations of the cheer the season brings,…
O, Queen of the Seasons, happy childhood is thy other name;
Thy spirit dwells, in the sunny lands and milder climes the same,
Within heart of youth; also in those advanced in years…
In these realms within the bounds of Cancer and of Capricorn,
We have caught the ruling spirit of the day the Christ was born….
We may not have Yule log or the hanging mistletoe,
But then we have the sunshine and the hearts that with it go…
And in these warmer regions of this fair old world of ours
We can brave the thorns at Christmas times and boldly pluck the flowers,
We can smooth down petty diff’rences and give the rein to peace,
We can but bid our wrongs be silent and our jealousies to cease, …
Thank God for all the Christmases within reach of time.’
Beryl Gilroy was born in 1924, in Springlands, Berbice, and here are some of her thoughts on the season.
It was a busy time for all the Christian families in our village. Some of the religious sects never celebrated Xmas but by the time the day came, it was impossible to set them apart…. All children were consciously co-operative, running minor and major errands without complaint. Politeness was carried almost to the point of mockery…. Paddy plants were planted in bowls indoors and tended with love so that they could, by their growth, greet the infant saviour…. We seemed to accept that people would drink too much of the rum so freely given, and eat too much of the food through which love and happiness were made flesh.
Rooplall Monar was born in November 1945, growing up in Plantation Lusignan, East Coast of Demerara, until he was seven when he moved to Annadale. Most of his writing was done in Ramsingh Street, the name of one of his many memorable collections of short fiction.
Every time Christmas season approaching me does always remember one particular Friday gone back when me one small boy… Me tell you, is every manjack singing hymns and Chrismus carols while Headmaster Williams swaying he cane on the stage with he eyes close as though he conducting one music choir…. Well, every time ahwe done sing one carol, them Missie up in the verandah clapping… then them two manager missie start throw down handful sweetie and cent and jill while they giggling as though we is dog or carrion crow who gat fo fight fo the cent and jill and sweetie. And you should see the scrambling and fall-down and bruise-up while fancy-fancy sweetie and cent and jill dropping down like rain and them manager missie giggling and ahwe school picknie scrambling as though cent and jill is ahwe life.
The book, ‘Nostalgias: Golden Memories of Guyana 1940 – 1980’ by Godfrey Chin opens with a reflective feature on Christmas via ‘Christmas 1944: In memory of my father’ and ends with an entertaining feature on Christmas via ‘The true Guyanese Christmas spirit’. In between those two pieces are numerous references to Christmas, both major and minor.
In ‘Christmas 1944’, you could find every and anything on the season at that time like Christmas Raffle, Christmas Box hand, Puzzlin Box, with which to make your Christmas shopping a pleasure or pain. Depending on how you prioritise, you may be able to enjoy ‘Swift ham in tar paper, a five-pound tin of Macintosh Quality Street chocolates, Marie custard cream biscuits and an Edam Dutchman head cheese’. For breakfast, you may be able to get ‘slices of ham, pickled onions, ketchup and bread plus Red Rose tea, cocoa, or bush tea…boiled duck, funsee soup with foo-chuck, ice cream with KOO canned grapes, imported from South Africa but later banned after apartheid’.
During this season, no one is left out. There are chores for mothers like ‘sewing curtains; boiling, honey-baking and cloving the ham; churning salt butter to bake sponge cake; setting sorrel, ginger beer, jamoon or rice wine’, preparing garlic pork and pepperpot. Also making artificial flowers from crepe paper. Everyone is involved in Christmas cleaning which included re-polishing furniture with a ‘magical concoction of mentholated spirit and French wood polish’ and polishing floor or covering it with linoleum.
Decorating the Christmas tree was the big event of the season. Chin wrote ‘[o]n the fourth Sunday before Christmas, the annual ritual …would begin.’ And for many decades, everything concerning the Christmas was homemade.
The other big event of the season was Christmas Eve Day and Christmas Eve Night – last minute shopping, window shopping after stores were closed cracking peanuts and licking ice cream cones, and midnight mass.
In this feature, ‘Christmas 1944’, you would find toys for tots and the game children played. The toys were ‘inexpensive’ like ‘jig saw puzzles, colouring books, and spring-wound toy train made of tin, Sherman and Panzer tanks’, wood guns, slingshots, boats, submarines, all accompanied by ‘flutes from papaw stems; comb and silver paper; empty bottle and spoon; calabash shac-shac; and biscuits cans for bass drums’.
And for sure, our writers will record for posterity the Christmases post-sugar and first oil. What will they say and how will they say it, stay tune.
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
(Sunday Times Magazine)
