Wendell Gibson, 55, who has lived all of his life in Karia Karia, Region Three recalled that Christmas in his younger days was celebrated with a lot of unity.
“Everyone in the community had a bond… and we used to be entertained with carol singing on Christmas morning but all of that cut out now,” he told this newspaper.
He said his uncle and few other men would go around the village from around 6 am, “before the sporting start,” to sing and wake those who were probably sleeping and wish everyone a merry Christmas.
He recalled too that as a child, Christmas meant decking out in new clothing, playing with new toys and eating a lot of nice food.
On Christmas Day residents of the small village in Karia Karia did not have to have an invitation to visit each other’s homes. There would be an open invitation.
“We used to go from house to house,” spreading Christmas cheer and sampling “food, cake, ginger beer and sweet drinks and we used to enjoy that.”
As for the “big guys, they consumed alcohol, and they had the same pattern going from house to house. Let’s say if we had 30 houses in the community, they would go to all 30… Some of them would fall out and sleep right where they are, but the sport would still go on.”
Gibson pointed out that “Christmas is not like before; there are lots of segregation and people don’t do that walking about anymore.”
During the Christmas season, it is still a special time for the children who look forward for when the “big companies would go in distribute toys to them.” He lives in a little village where most of his siblings with their families and other relatives reside.
Apart from having pepperpot on Christmas morning, like most other Guyanese, they would have no other traditional food on that day. Their menu would include fried rice, chowmein and chicken.
In fact, he noted that the only time they connect to their culture is during Amerindian Heritage Month when they would have a cultural day celebration. He admitted that they have lost their culture and that “the people who used to upkeep the Amerindian traditions have died.”
Residents would start cleaning about three weeks before Christmas and put up the decorations at the same time, instead of waiting until Christmas Eve night, like they did in the past.
Gibson shared that they would use “regular oven” to bake their Christmas cake, but when his mother was alive she baked in a box oven and then use a coal pot underneath.
The oven was made of wood and the inside was lined with asbestos, because of its fireproof nature.
At that time “the people didn’t know about the dangers of asbestos. Imagine a deadly thing like that they put in the oven and people used to bake inside. He recalled that his mother used an oven that measured five feet in height by five feet in width.
Apart from baking cake at Christmastime, she used to “bake buns to sell and it was “the best buns I ever eat. After that I never had any other buns like that.”
