Christmas used to be the best time of the year when I was a youngster growing up in Manchester Village with my grandmother.
You knew Christmas was in the air when the children started playing ‘tagga’, a game played for rubber bands, which were only available during the festive season. Boys, in particular, would throw flat pieces of metal, board or brick into a circle to “knock out” the rubber bands about two feet in diameter, placed at an agreed distance away (four, five or six yards) depending on the age group. Each participant was expected to “pool up”, and as fast as you knocked the rubber bands out of the circle they became yours.
However, throwing the objects is sometimes dangerous with five or six anxious children awaiting their turn, their attention focused on the circle with the ‘pool’ of rubber bands and not the moving objects; I have a scar under my left eye to attest to this.
Pepper-pot
This, my grandmother used to say, had to start cooking at least one week before Christmas Day. It was never officially finished cooking until Christmas Day. She used to say that the pepper-pot had to “rotten” before it tasted good. I never waited so long for something that even the passers-by would smell and say, “Whuh, me gah come fuh some a duh”.
For most villagers, Christmas Day preparations started with the scouring of houses, inside and out. Those who could afford it often added a coat of paint to their walls to further spruce up their homes. Christmas Eve Day was the final day of Christmas preparations. Floors were given their final coat of polish; butter and sugar were creamed (for Christmas cake); bread dough was being mixed. And oh! I remember always wanting to taste essence, because it smelled so sweet. They (my grandmother and other relatives) always told me that it didn’t taste good. But I couldn’t imagine something smelling so sweet, and they didn’t want me to taste it. I had to. And I did! I never told them, though.
Sometime after mid-day on Christmas Eve they would start baking bread, then the black cakes and sponge cakes.
On Christmas Eve night the curtains went up, and when the lamps were lit it was a totally different atmosphere. You could hardly believe you were in your own home. The curtains smelled different, the floor gleamed, and you were not even allowed to sit in the same chairs you sat in all year round as relatives complained that, “you guh mash up them cushion and nasty ah floor.” You had to be content with staying in the kitchen or the bedroom. Even the bedroom looked strange; new sheets and curtains, and then you had to bathe before you could go on your own bed.
All of a sudden it was, ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that, you can go here you can’t go there’. But then that’s how you knew it was Christmas. We were always told that on Christmas Eve night before we went to bed we must hang up our socks – school socks – so that Santa Claus could put gifts in them for us. And Santa Claus really loved us. He always filled our socks and left boxes with other stuff.
I could remember one time I prayed for a toy gun, and we used to have to pray loudly, and to my surprise Santa heard and put it right next to my bed. On Christmas morning I told my uncle, who had come from Suriname a few days before, what Santa did for me, and he laughed. My elder sister did not believe Santa ever came, although he brought things for her too.
The masquerade used to be integral part of the Christmas season. Men/boys would dress like women with masks on their faces, beating old buckets, “tinins” (tins), and other objects, and dancing through the streets. I think it used to be on Boxing Day when everyone went out either on the ‘front landing’ or in front of their gates to look at the masqueraders.
My sister now reminds me, and my children, that I used to be under the bed.
Amidst the masqueraders was the ‘long lady’. A woman, I used to think, with the height of two or three persons! “Me gah see this,” I used to say, but for some reason, I could not get close enough to really see her. My grandmother used to try to trick me by giving me the money to give to the masqueraders. I never gave them any; I never got close enough to them. The money and I always disappeared.
Reminiscing this year, an elderly Manchesterite said things have changed a lot “even 15 to 20 years ago”. He said children and even some parents did not understand the true meaning of Christmas. During his time as a child, he said, if you walked past five homes you would receive five bags with things inside from people. Everybody wanted to know that they would have given someone something for Christmas, but now people only want to collect; nobody is giving he said. Their front doors used to be open, signalling to passers-by that they were welcome and on entering they would receive some ginger beer and a piece of cake.
He told Stabroek News that there used to be Christmas parties especially for children, and separate Christmas parties for adults, but now if there are parties, children are there as well as the adults so the children emulate their seniors (and probably think there are adults too). At Cox Disco, proprietor Harold Cox, elderly and bed-ridden now, never allowed children to purchase alcohol or cigarettes even if it was for an adult. Children were not allowed in or around his place unless it was children’s party time.
Jacob Grey, a resident of Manchester, said that during the early 1970s, he and a group of about seven used to sing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve night starting from Tain and ending up in Manchester. He remembered one night when they sang their hearts out in the Whim Police compound. The commander there at the time was enjoying them so much that he requested that they perform throughout the night; they did it with pleasure, he said.
It was sad, he said, that people did not take up these things now. The fun and cheer they brought to everyone then would last him a lifetime. He said they would receive ginger beer, cake, pepper-pot, and sometimes a few people would offer then money. They were not looking for the money, he said, only to bring “good tidings to the people. We never want nothing. If you give something we will accept, but we doesn’t ask anybody fuh anything.”
He remembered a few of the persons who were in the group with him: “Haran Smart – he used to play guitar, Cort White – he to used to play guitar, Cat Sam and Rudolph Durant [both deceased] – them used to beat drum, Boywillie Durant and Noel Adams [former radio announcer at GBC] used to sing with we.” He doubts that these things could happen again, “times to hard. People get them family fuh look after,” he said.
Gavin Munroe, a probation officer and resident of Manchester, said Christmas was a time when children – boys playing “R-Rheo” with toy guns, girls with their dolls – used to have a merry time. They would go around buildings, bushes, hide and shoot the others before being shot. It was a time for gifts, fun, and play.
When he was a child the church used to organize carol singing through the streets. As they went along other children joined them, “and it used to be wonderful”. There used to be concerts and skits, “with real good actors”. Santa Claus, he told Stabroek News, was a blown up balloon figure. There were no “real” Santas then; you had to go to Georgetown where if you were lucky you might see “real Santa”.
Home-made ginger beer was what someone would have been offered if they were given a piece of cake. There was Christ in Christmas then, he said and it was not as commercialized as it is now.
