A Different Silence

Apr 18, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Good Friday in Guyana is not what it used to be. The day has lost its hush.

There was a time—still close enough to be remembered, far enough to feel like myth—when Good Friday was the stillest day of the year. The stillness was not of neglect but of reverence. The kind of stillness that stretched across neighborhoods like a blanket and made you lower your voice even indoors.

You did not speak loudly on Good Friday. You did not joke. The radio did not entertain; it mourned. The air itself felt thick with memory and devotion. If a pin dropped, Guyana heard it, from the dry grass of the Corentyne to the salt air of Kitty. Long ago, the shops—big and small, those that sold things and those that sold nothing but hope—closed their doors without a second thought. Streets stood empty as if in solidarity with the crucified Christ. The bars were shuttered. Alcohol disappeared from public life. Meat gave way to bun and cheese, rice and vegetables, served in quiet and consumed with care. Even the sky joined the fast—kites, so common a sight in the Lenten season, were kept grounded on Good Friday. They would have seemed too joyful, too free.

In those days, even those who hadn’t darkened a church’s doorstep in years would find themselves under stained glass, caught in the solemn pull of an ancient story. Good Friday had a gravity to it. It drew people inward, toward reflection, restraint, and a shared sadness that wasn’t always spoken but was always understood.

But that is not quite the Good Friday of today.

These days, Good Friday has lost some of its gravity. It floats. It no longer holds Guyana still. The roads are busy with cars; the markets hum with activity. Most shops are closed, yes—but the air is not still. Radios play what they will. The silence has lifted, and in its place is something more ordinary, more forgetful. Some will say this is the inevitable price of progress. Others call it secularization, a long word that sounds like a slow erosion. But the change is not only about the weakening of religion; it is also about the stretching of identity. Guyana, after all, is not a Christian country. It is a country where Christians live but also where Hindus, Muslims, Baha’is, Rastafarians, and people with no particular label share the same space.

For a long time, the Good Friday tradition reigned by law as well as by custom. But time has a way of asking questions of every tradition: Why this day? Why this silence? Who decides, and for whom?

One could argue that the fading of Good Friday’s stillness represents the crumbling of moral values and social cohesion. But it could also be seen—less dramatically, more democratically—as the relaxation of a cultural hegemony. For decades, non-Christian Guyanese observed Christian holy days out of respect. But now, there is a greater deference to religious pluralism.

And yet, the greatest erosion may not be coming from outside Christianity, but from within. The traditional Christian denominations—Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists—are no longer the dominant voices. In their place have risen the Pentecostals, the Evangelicals, the free churches with their raised hands and amplified praise.  These new churches have their own ways of observing the Crucifixion. Some do not at all. There is a restlessness even in religion now. And Good Friday, that once-deep well of communal restraint, has begun to dry around the edges.

So what do we make of all this change?

Should bars open? Should meat sizzle on grills? Should footballs fly across the fields and music pump from speakers? Should we let Good Friday go entirely the way of solemn Sundays and handwritten letters?

No, not quite. While traditions may evolve, they ought not be discarded wholesale. Good Friday offers us something beyond theology—something humane. It reminds us of stillness. It reminds us of restraint. And in a time when everything urges us to do more, buy more, go faster, and talk louder, we need days that tell us to stop. Days to do less, consume less, and think more.

Good Friday was a day when the country, whether it believed in Christ or not, learned to pause together. That, to my mind, is a tradition worth preserving—not out of piety, but out of need. If nothing else, let Good Friday remain a day when we reconsider noise. Let it be a day that doesn’t chase us toward malls and marketplaces. Let it be a day when we allow ourselves to be bored, to be still, to be unfinished. Guyana’s Good Friday may never return to what it once was. But it can still be something. Not a relic. Not a rule. Just a gentle pause in a world too fast. We need that silence—not just to honour the past, but to survive the present.

(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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