Latest update March 21st, 2025 5:03 AM
Expectations of a Guyanese Christmas
By Sasha Schultz
This year for the first time Mona will be spending Christmas in Guyana. She grew up hearing her mother and uncle talk about what Christmas was like for them as young children and it always filled her with such wonderment that she just knew she had to spend at least one Christmas here.
Every year on Christmas morning Mona’s mother and the rest of the family would reminisce about Christmas in Guyana and the nostalgia in their voices would ever be present year after year.
They talked about how on Christmas Eve they would go to the market. The market would be open late that night and they would all be allowed to go and do the shopping for Christmas. They would then return home where the cleaning would start. Even though the children were allowed to participate in the preparation they were sent to bed by midnight when the work still needed finishing touches. 
In the morning when they awoke everything would be brand new. Overnight walls were painted, floors polished, decorations hung, the Christmas tree put up on the veranda and fairy lights strung. An assortment of paper decoration would adorn the walls. But the best thing of all would be the aroma emanating from the kitchen–the smell of freshly baked bread and pepper pot on the fireside.
Both black cake and sponge cake would be baking in the oven and the ginger beer would be placed in the refrigerator to be cooled. The children would rush to bathe and get ready for breakfast and the rest of the day.
After breakfast the children would then listen to the distant sounds of the approaching masquerade bands with bad cow. This would be going on all week and the children would be given free rein to accompany the band, village after village, as far as they could go calling on family, friends and neighbours as they go along, enjoying the cake and ginger beer that would be offered to all.
When Mona’s mother was a child she very rarely received Christmas presents. Yet Mona would hear her say even to this day that she can never recapture the feeling of joy she felt at Christmas time in Guyana. This is why Mona is forcing her mother to spend Christmas here with her this year.
Mona states, “Christmas is very different for them in New York. They usually celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve where her mother is known to prepare the most elaborate Christmas dinners.
“All their friends, families and neighbours are usually invited. Presents are given to everyone and all the children are allowed to open at least one gift. By midnight everyone leaves except family members who always came ready to overnight in anticipation of Christmas morning.”
Christmas morning is when Mona’s mom tries her best to recreate the spirit of Christmas in Guyana. After everyone goes to bed her Mom and aunts stay up clean and wrap presents for the family. They heat up a variety of pepper pot, one made by Mona’s mother and the other from her Trini auntie. This creates an inside rivalry that astute family members wisely eat both and comment on how well they both taste.
Bread bought from the Guyanese baker shop is usually cut up and placed in the middle of the table, while the pacou from Guyana Mona’s mother would have in the freezer for the past three months simmers as it is steamed. Bake and salt fish, eggplant choka and tomato choka all make an appearance on Christmas morning.
The smell wafting through the building invades everyone’s sleep forcing him or her to rise to a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.
In this family Mona and her 10-year-old cousin Aaliyah are the only two children and even though most of the presents under the tree belong to them, they are usually more interested in the food, especially the pepper pot.
After breakfast and the opening of presents, this is when the reminiscing of Christmas in Guyana begins without fail every year.
This year Mona is at a loss on how to help her mother recapture the Christmas of her past. Mona mother’s constant complaints of the price for everything and the fact that they have little or no family members remaining in Guyana seems to render this task almost impossible.
Also, her mom grew up in a small village on the Essequibo coast where Mona was made to understand that everything is done differently from Georgetown.
Mona can hardly wait for Christmas Eve to arrive to see what magic it holds. If only her mother could just get to see one masquerade band it would all be worth it.
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