Christmas 30 years later

Dec 25, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Next year marks three decades that I have been a newspaper columnist. It should be a difficult task writing about Christmas every year. What do you write about Christmas every year? Aren’t you supposed to run out of things to pen? No! Not in Guyana. I doubt I am going to be alive another thirty years but if I am, I bet I can compose a new topic different from the Christmas columns I would have done sixty years ago.
A columnist can do three pieces each day because in this country, we live in a vortex of senselessness that generate so many disasters and catastrophe that three commentaries may not even do. So what’s new to write about Christmas that I have done since 1988? The sugar industry is the best place to start. I cannot accept that thousands of sugar workers have been put out of employment at this time of the year. It is unconscionable and inhumane. Maybe in another time of the year but not during the Christmas season.
The reason is obvious – children have huge expectations as Christmas approaches. I did when I was a tiny tot so I knew the pangs and pain of not having a Christmas gift. My only gift was a light-green water-gun my mother bought for me at Christmas when I was six. It was the only time I got a Christmas present from my parents.
The next year there was no money. My parents had spent all their savings on the wedding of my brother who later became famously known in Guyana as Lightweight Kissoon.
I cherished that gun, hid it each year at the top of my parent’s bedroom window and it became my recurring Christmas present each year. I kept that gun for 28 years at which age I met my future wife. It was one of the first things I showed her when she visited my home on Durban Street, Wortmanville.
Soon after marrying her, we left for Canada to study, and months later our Durban Street house fell down and I never saw my green water-gun again.
An unpleasant encounter left me sad on the eve of Christmas Eve (Saturday 23rd). I was looking for Sensun Blue dandruff shampoo for my daughter. All the mainstream pharmacies were out of it. I stopped at New Market and East Streets where there is a recently established pharmacy at the eastern side of the junction.
As I walked in, on the road outside the pharmacy was this little boy and his mother. He was sobbing while she was trying to console him with the words, “I do not have money for that; you will get one next year.” I don’t know what the situation was but it reminded me of myself when I was his age.
I have no idea why those sugar workers had to be made redundant at the holiday season but it should not have happened. Couldn’t the government have waited until the festive period was over?
No matter which set of politicians comes into power, my experience living in Guyana is that the poor never wins. I don’t see any difference this Christmas with all the others gone by in terms of improvement of our poorer classes.
I was overflowing with anger when those seawall vendors told me that Minister David Patterson was about to evict them in this period of the year (see my November 14 column captioned, “A telephone call from the beach to the Minister.”) I shouted into the phone as I was speaking to him; “You cannot do that at this time of the year.”
Can you imagine the depth of cruelty of our government that you would evict vendors from selling on the seawall at Christmas time? At the time of writing the same Minister is in Brazil with President Granger. They can travel the world but poor vendors have to do without an income in the festive season of December when every adult citizen has additional expenses.
I believe in the removal of authoritarian regimes. When I was very young I did few conspiratorial things against the Burnham Government of which I have no regrets and would do them again. My youth is gone but if I was at that age I would have engaged in unorthodox activism to remove the sadistic regimes of Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar and this neoliberal administration we have in 2017.
Poor people deserve a decent life; successive Guyanese governments must stop denying them their livelihood. I have seen too much poverty in 2017 in our country to make me think the poor will have an enjoyable Christmas today.

Latest News

Christmas 30 years later

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| February, 10th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Khalil, Pollard and Barker reign supreme as BCQS Int’l Masters...

Cricket West Indies passes historic governance...

Archery Guyana hosts thrilling 2024 National...

Prashad claims victory at the recently concluded...

West Indies & Sri Lanka top their respective...

Allicock, Amsterdam named in GBA training squad...

Features/Columnists

Are we better off today than we were before first oil?

OAS Secretary General Election and renewed OAS Consensus

Jagdeo on contract awards

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

Christmas 30 years later

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| February, 10th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]