MUCH like now, back in the day, we were tasked with writing a composition about how we spent Christmas and the August holidays after we returned to school. The things that were written conveyed the hardships of those times. Not every child got a new doll or a gun and holster for Christmas. If that interfered with the ‘big people’ Boxing Night or New Year’s Night dan-dan, or if the earning power simply wasn’t there, those ‘good old days’ were, in the majority of times, punishing times. But that wasn’t all; some children also learnt what their “kinnas” were.

When roaming during the season, accepting a lunch invitation at a friend’s home (if the authority of the kitchen was a big sister or cousin), the adults would always ask children, “Child, what yuh don’t eat, to be sure?” Outside of that monitoring, mishaps could lead to the embarrassment of a child vomiting. Some, like myself, were averse to unscaled fish, pork, and shrimp and were always advised to quietly tell the charge of the kitchen what you didn’t eat and did eat if offered. Of course, in school, much of the eating challenges and the professed causes were discussed between children, but were not always included in the composition, though some were.

Looking back, those compositions did serve a purpose—they encouraged us to purge ourselves in a collective effort. Though we didn’t quite understand why some things made us nauseous, parents did offer explanations, though these were not allowed to be read aloud due to teacher censorship. When we read our compositions to the class, I did not include what I was told—that the things I didn’t eat were the cleaners of the animal world and were not suitable for human consumption. I was even told that the matriarch of my father’s side came from an African tribe that didn’t eat such things. Who knows? I never really explored it. I learned quickly that life’s challenges if you wanted to rise above the echelons of disadvantages on your own terms, required the warfare of choices in the arena where souls are bartered. That arena, a place of shadows, cared less for the private arguments of sympathies.

The shadow of the Christmas past was explored through our compositions. Aspects of those compositions were repeated, even as the world changed. A generation held the school banner when we became a Republic and tried our best to understand the world around us and much more, what was expected of us. It would take years to understand concepts such as, “Eat what you grow.” I was living on Lamaha Street. Well, after a long time, apples were brought back to Guyana. Either my mother or one of my sisters had brought my first-born child to me during that Christmas season. The child was living with my mother. I had bought some apples and mangoes, so I sliced an apple and gave her one while we continued chatting. But I observed that she wasn’t eating the apple with any enthusiasm, so I asked her how she liked it—if she didn’t enjoy it. She looked at me, shook her head in the negative, and replied, “Pa, I don’t like this kind of mango; it ent got juice.” I took the apple, washed and sliced a mango then gave it to her with a saucer. I was speechless. Our national Buxton Spice had won as she ate her mango with a smile. That would have been an incredible composition.

What was achieved there is worth preserving, compared with the euphoria of the apple when I was her age. True, both fruits are eaten today, but the cultivated preferences of citizens of my age have dwindled. We should not take these small revolutions for granted. I did enjoy the presence of our own Woodside Choir’s Christmas Concert, and a friend shared with my family the Trinidadian choir, The Marionettes, at Queen’s Hall. I enjoyed them tremendously.

I do hope that this composition resonates with readers as we embrace 2025.