December’s tradition and Old Year’s Night passage

Jan 01, 2017 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols
There’s no month in the calendar year quite like December. Call it the month of seasonal joy,

the taking-stock month; the looking-ahead month; and the symbolic month of Jesus’ birth, celebrated by many with as much bacchanalian indulgence as with piety.
No surprise that it also embraces a day associated to a large extent with these trends, along with nostalgia and the rejuvenated hope of a more propitious future. They all meet and mesh in the last twenty-four hours of the month, and year – New Year’s Eve, or as some of us here in Guyana still prefer to call it, Old Year’s Day. (And night)
The day’s reflective character, especially as it mellows into night, is hauntingly captured in the melody and lyrics of the classic Scottish lilt, Auld Lang Syne, without which, the year’s final moments would be a galling travesty for many revellers and sentimentalists. There’s just that indefinable something about the song with its theme of enduring friendship, conviviality, and a certain pathos that make it such a fitting transition refrain as the midnight countdown gets underway heralding a new year.
December has become inextricably linked with the Christmas season, but it wasn’t always so. For centuries before the birth of Jesus, it was simply the tenth (as the ‘decem’ in its name suggests) and last month of the Roman calendar year, before January and February were introduced to acknowledge the unnamed period between the end of the year and March; the latter being the beginning of the year during that era.
Historians note that the advent of Jesus’ birth was in an age mired in pagan Roman practices like sun worship and Saturnalia, a week-long orgy of lawlessness celebrated from December 17th to 25th. And knowledgeable scholars put Jesus’ birth no later than September, or as early as March, of the particular year, certainly more in keeping with shepherds and their flocks in open fields.
The world in general, including most Christians, acknowledges that Jesus the Christ was almost certainly not born in December. Many understand the month’s and the season’s pagan origins and links, yet they persist in hallowing and ‘hedonising’ it. It makes you wonder just how powerful tradition and groupthink are. Was the Roman Emperor Constantine so successful in marrying Christianity to paganism, as scholars suggest, that the trappings of the latter have outweighed the true import of the former?
Millions of people seem to think so, including many Guyanese who over the years have bemoaned the commercialization and trivialization of the Christmas season and the month. Every December, Guyanese are exhorted and encouraged to recall the underlying sacredness behind that buzz phrase ‘reason for the season’ and every December most of us seem to forget or at least subordinate it to less spiritual activities.
The solemnity aspect of the season too often becomes a series of afterthoughts which culminate in the customary Old Year’s Night church-going which, for many, suddenly becomes a very important occasion, since traditionally, it is one of two days in the year where attending church is a must, even for the most reprobate amongst us. The other is Good Friday. We feel it is unconscionable to miss church on these days, and manage to squeeze the saviour in with just enough righteousness to win His blessing for some indefinite period ahead.
Despite December’s religious connotation and its flavour of goodwill, it is no less prone to violence, bloodshed, and death than other months; in fact these demons seem to relish going against the grain of peace, civility and love as the year winds down. Since Christmas Eve, three disturbing outrages have made a mockery of the Christmas spirit. A woman and her daughter were savagely chopped by the latter’s ex-boyfriend, (The young woman’s hand was severed) an eight year-old girl allegedly neglected by her mother, died in a horrific accident, and a young prison warder plunged a knife 15 times into the chest of his estranged wife. Where did the Christmas spirit go?
On a personal note, December threw its unpredictable punch at me and my siblings 45 years ago when, in the space of seven days, just before Christmas, we lost both our parents. On a brighter note, its last day in 1976 saw me walking down the aisle at Christ Church to say ‘I do’ to my soon-to-be wife, now of four decades. The years have passed swiftly, but the month retains its bitter-sweet essence for me, reflecting as it undoubtedly does for most of us, the inconstant nature of life itself. That will likely never change.
So what does this year’s end and the dawning of 2017 augur for us here in Guyana? With so many variables, and the inconstancy of life just referred to, your guess is as good as mine. At the beginning of the year I wrote that it had started in bloody fashion with the alcohol-fuelled killings of four young men in three days. Atrocities like these stand out gruesomely in our collective mind, underlying our basest fears. The year seemed to be ending in similar tragedy with two days to go. (At the time of this writing)
Such acts obviously do not represent the general predisposition of our people. December’s Christmas spirit and our own innate sense of goodness will always counter the grossness of the depraved among us. Like the underplayed but enduring message of joy and goodwill heralding the birth of the Christ child long, long ago, the essence of the season, the month, and our collective national spirit simply has to triumph over our inhumanity.
Last evening, the words of Auld Lang Syne would have encapsulated the nostalgia for things past, and for relationships that have endured time and circumstance. Today, after Old Year’s Night’s passage, the new year will leave those sentiments behind temporarily. But twelve short months from now, December and Christmas will be back with all their subliminity, frivolity, and over-indulgence. And we can’t wait for them. Happy New Year!

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