I AM not a fan of Christmas for a number of reasons. One- I grew up with Hindu culture. I grew up enjoying Hindu holidays. For me, I cannot turn my back on what my “genetic” culture is. Two—I have been married almost 50 years to a practicing Muslim woman. Because of love, I share her sentiments about Muslim holidays.
Three — I am deeply resentful of colonial narratives, colonial cultural impositions, and colonial brainwashing by European empires, and I see Christianity as such an imposition. For me, Emancipation Day should be a two-day affair. Four- Christmas brings back not just bad memories but horrible memories of an existence based on poverty that every Christmas in Wortmanville made that existence unbearable.
But the reality is that Christmas is a prodigious affair in Guyana, celebrated across religions and cultures. Hindu families and Muslim families go for Christmas in the same big way they celebrate their national holidays.
I am close to several Muslim and Hindu families that are strict devotees of their respective religions, but they are fully into Christmas decorations. I participate in the merriment of Christmas because my wife does too. She likes Christmas.
This year, Christmas will be big, and I mean big. The economy is simply climbing, as I like to say; “where the stallion meets the skies” (a phrase I took from the Barry Manilow hit song, “Could it be Magic.”). From what I see of the presence of people in the streets and the spending that accompanies it, this will be a huge Christmas.
Comparing Christmas to the ones forty years ago, Guyana is a brand-new country. I returned home in 1984 to a country where Christmas celebrations were almost non-existent. Guyana’s shops, not just in Region Four but in the totality of Guyana, were empty. Unemployment was massive. Money was nowhere to be found. To understand how brand new Guyana is today at Christmas in 2025, you had to live in that era. The economy had simply collapsed, and it took Christmas with it.
I came home and lived at my mother-in-law’s place at the junction of Hadfield Street and Werk-n-Rust. Two corners away going north was a dying supermarket named J. P. Santos at the junction of Cummings Street and Charlotte Street, in the district of Bourda. That was one of the famous supermarkets in Guyana from the 1940s to the 1980s.
I remember during the Christmas season in 1985, I went into J.P. Santos, and the shelves were literally empty. All I found on one particular shelf was preserved carambola in a beautiful box wrapping made by Ms. Vashti Warner, who headed the quality food section of the government-owned Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation (GPC) where the Marriott Hotel is now located. It was while liming on the seawall at the Luckhoo Swimming Pool, opposite GPC, that I first met the lady who became my wife.
Vashti Warner’s preserved carambola was as good as any dates or prunes or raisins you can find in Guyana today, and as a matter of urgency, the Guyana Marketing Corporation should resuscitate preserved carambola manufacturing. The years from 1984, when I returned, were the years Guyana had to go without Christmas. When you see how the Christmas season has been blossoming over the past 15 years in this country, then, when compared to 1984 onwards, Guyana is simply a brand-new country.
I marvel at what I have been seeing the past week during this Christmas season. It reminds me of the era of my boyhood days. In those days, nocturnal visits to the show-rooms of downtown stores were a must for Georgetown people. There isn’t a person who is in his mid-sixties upwards that did not make that nocturnal trip at least one year.
There is no question in my mind that last year and now this year, the largeness of the presence of the Christmas season was/is due to our newly found oil wealth. I don’t doubt that there may be folks out there who need some financial assistance, but this Christmas people have money to spend, and they are spending it.
I see downtown stores that are literally crammed. As you look at this scenario, there is the distinct feeling that takes over you that a future for Guyana has arrived at last. If ever a country needed a break to break away from its wretched existence, it was Guyana. No one should envy this country as it showcases Christmas 2025. The people of Guyana deserve a swashbuckling holiday season and they have it and are enjoying it.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.