Dear Editor,
Like other traditional festivities, Christmas and the New Year are eagerly awaited and enthusiastically celebrated among the large Guyanese population in NYC. The yuletide spirit can be observed in every community where Guyanese have settled.
Christmas is the most celebrated of all festivals. Although a religious holiday, celebrating the birthday of the founder (Jesus) of Christianity, Christmas has taken on a secular tone. People of all faiths celebrate the holidays providing cheer to children of all backgrounds. The Christmas holiday is a universal festival which virtually every national, regardless of religious affiliation, observes.
The season transcends religion and has been a tradition in virtually every Hindu and Muslim homes and is celebrated with the same fervour as Diwali among Hindus or Eid among Muslims. Wherever Guyanese nationals are settled (from Flatbush in Brooklyn to Richmond Hill in Queens to Westchester in the Bronx), they are gearing up for the holidays and making elaborate preparation to welcome the joyous season among their family members.
Moving around the Guyanese communities, one can see homes that are beautifully decorated with colourful majestic Christmas trees of varying sizes and colours and evergreen wreaths and mistletoes with all kinds of trimmings. An abundance of flickering multi-coloured lights with a variety of designs line the windows and entrance to the home and even on trees outside on the lawn. Dangling outside the homes are lights of varied designs including icicles, castnet and drapes. Outside trees are decorated right next to Hindu Jhandis fluttering in the wind. Melodious tunes can be heard from homes during this cold winter season.
An aura of X-Mas celebration is in the air on Liberty Avenue, the hub of Guyanese commercial activities drawing people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds to shop for fresh meat and preserved fruits for baking cake. The stores on the avenue and the avenue itself are well decorated. Christmas music at full blast emanates from many of the stores. The commercial districts on Liberty, Flatbush, Jamaica, Cypress, and Westchester Avenues have been teeming with shoppers.
It is wonderful to see Guyanese bringing their X-Mas tradition to their new adopted homeland in America.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
