Was Christmas of 2016 different from previous ones I knew?

Dec 25, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As usual, I attended as I did for all the years, the annual general meeting of Kaieteur News staff, that the staffers call “the bonus meeting”. That is the day when the company pays a bonus, and yes, to its columnists too. It is customary for those who have been around KN for a long time, to join in speech-making. Mr. Lall took the floor and announced that he had been doing this for 22 years, so what is there to say again.
I was perplexed, because I too didn’t know what I could possible say that I haven’t said before at these bonus meetings. It was a relief when this year’s format did away with the speeches. But at that meeting, it did occur to me that my Christmas article was in trouble.
After doing 27 Christmas Day columns, what could I possible say in 2016? I mean, I could pen another political article, but that would be incongruous with the ambience of Christmas Day. There is a time and place for everything, and surely after a column on social things, and things in general, every day in 2016 in KN, it would be insulting to readers to do yet another piece of social analysis.
But this is Guyana, where angst runs like a river that has burst its banks. This is Guyana, where nothing appears as they are and everything is a deceptive movement that tantalizes the soul and lacerates the psyche. This is Guyana, where anomaly, aberration and negativity meet in a confluence of piercing pessimism.
So could I escape another piece of social analysis in my column for Christmas Day? I will try, but if I fail by the time you reach the last paragraph then you can blame it not on my limited imagination, but on the unimaginative land that stifles the poetry of the faculties of its mentally disheveled citizenry.
I am torn between my personal Christmas and the impersonal Christmas I saw in my country. For me, this Christmas was philosophically rewarding. I extended the list of people I gave gifts to, and in all instances the recipients were people who needed it. We upped the amount we give to the animal clinic. My wife and I stopped giving each other gifts. We pool the money we would spend on each other and we donate it to the animal clinic on Robb Street. My daughter wrapped up a gift for our two pets – one for the cat and one for our big puppy – and put them under the Christmas tree that she had since she was one year old.
In my personal life, I cannot think of any other feeling of nirvana I experienced this Christmas. But then again, I live a boring life – from home to the National Park and back; to Kaieteur News and back to home and then I read the time away, interspersed with frequent moments of watching Italian giallo from the seventies. I think they are well done mystery-thrillers that deserve more artistic recognition than they are given by cinema lovers and film critics.
I honestly cannot think of any other soulful endeavour this Christmas that soothed my psyche. I can think of perhaps only one other thing which borders on the absurd. This year I bought two hams. When my wife saw them she was upset; she was irritated about it because my cholesterol is not exactly low. Up to now she cannot understand why I bought two, but she will know because I will reveal the reason now. Even though dogs cannot and should not eat ham, my puppy devoured it last year, so I thought of buying another one this year so there can be sufficient for me and my pet. I guess that’s it for the personal side of Christmas.
As an analyst, I cannot look myself in the mirror and say this was a better holiday season for the lower economic classes in Guyana. I think in 2016, the economy did not allow for more spending power of the masses. At the risk of upsetting the government in which my friend Khemraj Ramjattan is a Vice President, this has not been a better year for the working people, because the government has not done better for them.
There is a feeling that crept over me in 2016 and took over my faculties, and it tells me that we may have an administration that is not very ideologically inclined to treat the labouring classes as people who are entitled to be given what they never had since colonial times – a fairer slice of the cake. Anyway, have a peacefully enjoyable season.

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