Fun, toys and games at Christmas of yore  
‘REMEMBA yo boyhood days, rememba dem wayward ways, come leh we go down memory lane an dig up dem days again. ’ This popular calypso by Dave Martin (a Guyanese) and the Tradewinds tell of many wonderful and hilarious memories from our ‘small-days’. A large part of these memories are the games that we enjoyed playing and other fun events at Christmas. I chatted with a number of persons — too many to mention — and they all shared some of the games they remembered playing as children.

Remember ‘Dolly House’? There was mummy, daddy and the children. The food was cooked using all sorts of stuff like leaves, sand, paper and wood. Sometimes you struck it rich and got some real cooked food. Tea was a big part of this. The girls with tea sets were regularly doling out tea to all who they could get their hands on.

Then there was ‘Cowboys and Indians’. Boys could be seen running around in their cowboy hats, boots, gun-and-socket and a sheriff ‘s badge to make things legal.
‘Ketch-a-coop’ or ‘Ketcher’ was great fun: The more participants; the merrier. Simply keep out of the reach of the catcher. Your only reprieve came if you were lucky enough to get to ‘gool’. Here, you cannot be tagged and have a chance to rest before dashing off again.

Then there was ‘Police and Thief’. The cop got the gun, the cap, the baton and the badge. All the thief had was a gun, if he was lucky, and a lot of running to do.
‘Saul-Pass Moonlight’ is what we call ‘Saul-out’ today. There is also ‘Kichsee’ or ‘Kick Seed’, which is similar to ‘Hop Scotch’, whereby you are required to move from box to box, avoiding the box occupied by the seed.

‘Poor’ is a game of tagging. Four pens are drawn. Four players stand, one in each pen. Then there is the ‘Catcher and the Runner’. The ‘Runner’ has to touch someone in one of the pens and take their place before being tagged. The fun in this is that each person standing in a pen faces the opposite direction to the person next to them. The runner can only touch someone not facing him/her. The catcher cannot cross the line to tag anyone. He/she has to run around.

The bands were great fun, too. Small string-bands were formed, and percussion instruments used were buckets, tins (tinin’ cup), glass bottles with bricks inside or beaten with a piece of metal. Banjos were created with wood and rubberbands or any similar contraption. The greatest instrument used was the mouth organ. This was created from a comb and a piece of paper. This produced sweet music and lots of fun.

One last memory was Old Years Night in Georgetown. As the clock struck 12, busses (50 seaters-T&HD), cars and the Ferry begin to blow their horns. The din it created, plus the hearty greetings to loved ones and strangers alike was how people in GT ushered in the New Year.
Way back then, toys were fun, but they also meant a great lot to those who received them. There is a story of a father who made a large chest for his son to store his toys at Christmas. When the boy grew up to be a father himself, he was able to give all his toys to his son. None of his toys were destroyed over the years. What a legacy! Plenty we can learn from that today.