Christmas is here and I love it

Dec 22, 2019 Features / Columnists, My Column

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In another few days, it would be Christmas, that time of the year when Guyanese try to forget all their woes and set about enjoying everything.
People are cleaning their homes as if there was no cleaning all year. Perhaps it is the tradition, because all my life this has been the case. People may not wipe the walls of their homes all year; they may change a few curtains, but they were never in a hurry to put up new blinds and curtains. This happens at this time of the year.
As a boy, I remember scraping the chairs and tables in the home to prepare for a new coat of varnish. That is why to this day, I associate the smell of fresh paint and varnish with Christmas.
This is the time when people eat what they do not all year round. Garlic pork becomes a special dish as do the ham and the pepper pot. I make pepper pot at any time, because it is one dish that I love. But this year, I got caught doing every other things associated with work that I almost left myself undone.
There are the meats, but the preparation is something else.
I suppose I managed to escape the throngs in the city, but because I have to move about, I could not escape the traffic. There are more cars than roads, although there are motorists who are doing their best to reduce the numbers.
I would expect that some drivers would be ultra-cautious but then again, there is money to be made. So the minibuses and taxis are in a hurry. I have seen them try to force their way into traffic heading across their front. More often than not, it is a game of ‘chicken’ and the other driver often yields.
It is surprising that there are not many reports of road rage, since everyone seems in a hurry to get to their destination. But there have been a few fender benders, because not everyone is prepared to be courteous.
In spite of this, people still leave their homes to take in the scenes. And here I am talking about the ordinary man and woman who would have collected the pay increase announced by the government a few weeks ago.
I went to Republic Bank to do a transaction on Friday and while the situation is not as chaotic as it was a few weeks ago, it is still frustrating. The length of time it takes to complete a transaction is the source of the frustration.
There seems to be adequate teller booths, but on Friday many of these were unmanned. I would have thought that given the criticisms of a few weeks ago and the promise to have the situation normalised, the bank would have ensured that the customers would have been treated with some alacrity.
But then again, old habits die hard. As soon as lunchtime approaches, the tellers would simply disappear. I stood in the line which was outside the bank, because inside was full for about an hour. I know that come January things would be easy, because people would have spent all their money.
But away from the confusion is the beautiful sight of decorated homes. These days, people decorate outside the home. A few would still string lights inside.
I saw the trucks and vans leaving the various department stores taking brand new furniture to various destinations. Why do people wait until Christmas to shop for new furniture? Again, it may be the tradition.
The best part of the season is enjoyed on the radio. There are the Christmas songs. Years ago, there were Carols. That was the carry-over from the English. Today, we have the Caribbean or West Indian music that adds so much life to the occasion.
In the same way that the foreign songs dominated our airwaves, I wonder if our music is making its way into the foreign market. We were indoctrinated to the extent that many of us who only saw snow on the television have Christmas trees with artificial snow.
There are those who have winged out to the cold climes to enjoy the Christmas. They want to make a reality of the Bing Crosby tune ‘White Christmas’. They want to see snow.
For the love of me, I cannot see who would want to go where the place is bitterly cold and where people are reluctant to step outside unless they have a very good reason to do so. But we are who we are and we were trained by the foreign to be the local foreigners.
Many years ago, when I was at University, a lecturer said that we were never trained to work in our own country. Something about the teaching made us want to go overseas. That is why more than ninety per cent of my schoolmates reside overseas.
We were supposed to replace the colonial master, but to maintain all his traditions. We were made to believe that we have to wear coat and ties in this hot weather if we are to appear dressed. But one thing that the colonial master failed to teach us is that when we say goodnight, we are saying goodbye for the night.
But I go to cocktail receptions and people enter and greet the host with ‘goodnight.’ A British High Commissioner once said to me that the first time this happened at one of the receptions he hosted, he was shocked. He thought instinctively that the person who had just come was saying that he was leaving.
We have managed to rid ourselves of the tradition of buying guns for our sons and white dolls for our daughters. Necessity made us abandon the idea of buying toy guns. Our young men do not hesitate to buy real guns which they use often.
And each year the police would retrieve some of these illegal weapons. This year the figure must have exceeded one hundred.
We have foregone the tradition of buying books as gifts. Our children do not read as much as they should. We have adopted the term New Year’s Eve instead of Old Year’s night. We are still being indoctrinated. We have summer classes and summer sales.
We have Halloween and even Thanksgiving. I shudder to think that we would be like those in North America where Thanksgiving is the biggest holiday at the expense of Christmas. We now have turkey, something that I hate; and we continue to have grapes and apples ahead of our local fruits.
We still have rum which is consumed more than whisky and for that I am grateful. And now we have oil.
Christmas is here and I love it.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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