Dear Editor,
Happy Friday is a normal expression to greet someone on any given Friday. North Americans say ‘Thank God It’s Friday,’ (TGIF). With a sigh of relief, people are happy to bid farewell to the back of Thursday and do welcome the face of Friday. This is so in particular for those who receive a pay cheque or cash on Friday. Then, for others, it’s a whole different ball game for those who are excited to attend to a busy schedule or a jam-packed agenda with all the week-end chores, starting on Friday to get a jump start. The single ones do have a more consumable appetite with tasty variations, unable to restrain the urge to advance an early start on a promising Friday afternoon. A date with a mate is the fate of exiting the gate at an accelerating rate!
Good Friday is a popular holiday in Guyana and in other Caribbean islands. It is a day of solemnity and observed for its sanctity by Christians as the day Jesus was crucified. Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, was the 13th guest to arrive for the Last Supper. As customary, from the olden days of the colonists and prior to Independence in Guyana, it is a tradition for all business and entertainment places to be closed. People do look forward for the long, four-day weekend holiday, the following Monday being Easter. Schools are closed for the Easter holiday.
Unlucky Fridays carry Biblical conations and narrate stories prior to the crucifixion: it is believed that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge on a Friday; the day Abel was murdered by his brother Cain; the Temple of Solomon was toppled on a Friday; in the Great Flood, Noah’s ark set sail on a Friday. In a mythological story, Loki, the God of mischief, showed up as an uninvited 13th person, at a 12Gods party, to disrupt the event.
Black Friday in America is the day after Thanksgiving when customers would hunt for special deals and businesses would slash prices on their merchandise to kick off the Christmas season sale. It also refers to the financial crisis on the 24thSeptember, 1869, when the US gold market crashed on Wall Street, sending many businesses into bankruptcy. This day is associated historically to the 1950’s in Philadelphia when hordes of shoppers, visitors and revelers invaded the city for the Saturday’s Army-Navy football game, including looters who caused chaos and confusion.
Last Friday happened to fall on a 13th. There is a stigma of bad luck that is attached to this date and an enigma associated with fear, privately or publicly acknowledged, whether silently or openly. It is generously entertained even with the widest figment of imagination. Sometimes, this Friday the 13th is referred to as ‘Black Friday,’ perhaps of perceived doom and gloom of events which may potentially be premeditated in speculated shape and form, time, and event being unknown. Superstitious beliefs are engineered from incidence or coincidence and accepted as signs to beware and or be wary. Many do take extra precaution in avoiding any commitment, thus, “prevention being better than cure,” is an attitude applied in abstract. Many would avoid this date to commence any project, linking it to misfortune to be realized.
The dark Friday night is scarily ordained with illustrated and illusive gory criminal elements and events, in particular gruesome murders influenced with intensive insanity from the seasoning of mysterious sensationalism. The reservation of venturing outside becomes more pronounced when the sky is pampered with an eerie new moon.
Guyana’s ‘Black Friday’ has a deep seeded horror, engrained in no mystery or mysterious moment, but in a morbid memory, manifested on the grotesque date of Friday the 16th February, 1962. A grisly day filled not with Grimes Fairy Tales but the ghoulish behavior of the Kabaka’s backed PNC supporters comprising of rioters and arsonists, looted mostly Indian targeted stores in Georgetown, creating mayhem and terror, setting the city alight and burning down some fifty- six stores, eighty-seven damaged and sixty-six looted. Many were killed, raped, molested and physically harmed and maimed, leaving bitter scars far from harmony but of hurt and hate.
The Kaldor Budget presented by Jagan, created dangerous and damaging consequences, orchestrated by Burnham and his mobs and the TUC, which had incited workers to strike. Burnham’s grizzly, gross and grimaced words, will forever mark a dark era in the annals of Guyana’s history, staining and straining Guyanese relationship as the years went by, “Comrades,” a grimed Burnham exclaimed, “the fight starts now. Tomorrow at 2 o’clock in the afternoon there is a demonstration organized by the Trade Union Congress, a demonstration against the harsh proposals of the budget, which make life unbearable. No doubt the Riot Squad will be there. Do you still want to go? Comrades, remember that tomorrow Jagan’s army is coming down from Cane Grove and Windsor Forest. Do you still want to go? (Wynn Parry Commission).”
Not related to Black Friday is Halloween, an ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, a North American celebration when people would light bonfires and dress up with different evil costumes to ward off ghosts, goblins and ghouls. In the same trend also, following the 13th, is the famous “Beware the ides of March,” which falls on March 15th. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar was forewarned about his assignation. How wary or worried are you of Friday the 13th?
Yours respectfully,
Jai Lall.
