Christmas, recently and currently

Dec 24, 2020 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Welcome to Christmas 2020. Guyanese did not have much of one in 2018, and 2019. May Christmas 2020 make up for those two now lost in regret and bitterness, much of which still prevails in significant segments of this society.
In December 2018, and earlier, Guyana’s attention became riveted on who was involved, and when and how a much talked about no confidence motion would happen. The focus was on how such a development would swing the balance of power in Guyana, and reshape its politics. As talk of that heated up and emotions spilled over, the Christmas Season of two years ago suffered and was eventually as good as gone and dead. From the onset, Christmas 2018 took on a different complexion, and as that fateful day came to pass in the nation’s parliament, the worst instincts of our clashing peoples were unleashed and effectively smothered any Christmas feeling, any seasonal cheer.
Last December was not better, and could be reasonably described as worse still, when compared against the year before. All the passions and delays and cunnings from the whole of 2019 had accumulated, and destroyed the fabric of Christmas 2019. It didn’t stand a chance; not with repeated back and forth to the CCJ, the accompanying mainstream media wars, the vicious social media battlegrounds, and the tensions on the ground level with the ordinary man and woman in the street. Citizens were not exchanging pleasantries about fairy lights, but of outing other people’s light. This was the place to which aggressive and warlike positions had deteriorated in Guyana during the year, and against which the season of goodwill faded into grimaces and gracelessness.
How does this society recover was the concern, when so much intensity of prejudice and passions raged without letup, without quarter considered? How does December 2020 and the Christmas Season of 2020 fare against this still simmering backdrop? How could either have a chance given that for the greater part of 2020, the wounds remained opened and haemorrhaging, and raw and reeking of our hatreds and our settled way of life?
The answers to those hard, unsparing questions are neither easy nor readily forthcoming. What we have in place is an unsteady and uncertain peace. In some regards, it is an armed peace, which is the most terrible of ironies that could be, given that it is Christmas in Guyana. For, as all Guyanese know, including those who are of other beliefs and callings, it is this wonderful time of the year, when Guyanese pull out all the stops, no matter how poor they are, how little they have, how limited their prospects. For a brief, sometimes for a very long, moment, this nation comes to what we would term a traditional standstill. That is, save for the shopping and sightseeing and celebrating.
Though citizens are grappling with COVID-19 pandemic fears and individual economic pains, Guyanese are resourceful enough to dig deep and discover somewhere and somehow a little something to make this December a shade brighter for family and themselves. As we all know well, having lived through some sharp times, it has not been the most wonderful holiday season in the past couple of years. But this year has already exhibited the unmistakable signs that Christmas, a real Guyanese one, is in the air.
The streets are long and slow with crowds of cars and commuters. The stores are visible with lines before racks and register ringing merrily alongside Christmas carols filling the air. There is some zest in the steps of citizens, what we may even risk to take a chance and call joy and hope and a smile of good cheer. It is what we know, the way we have been a long while back, and that we struggle to be today. There is no other way that we could be, if we are to coexist as a people of vibrancy and promise, as a set of citizens enthused enough and emboldened to engage in reciprocal self-respect and regard for each other.
This is not just of December and during the Christmas Season, but all year round and every day. Guyanese: enjoy this time of Christmas in 2020.

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