By Stanley Greaves
The Advent of December anticipating the Christmas Season of celebrations, religious and secular, saw a change in activities from the rest of the year. There was excitement in the air, especially among children, whose expectations were not always met, mine included.
December meant housewives hopefully being able to do significant shopping based on husbands working overtime on the waterfront and doing odd jobs. The soldering man made the rounds to repair cups and pots using his coal pot and soldering irons. “Enamel wares solder,” was his call. He would collect everything that needed repairing before lighting the coal pot and placing the soldering irons in it. Cabinet makers, full or part time, were busy building or repairing furniture. The standard finish was French polishing, an art in its own right. I watched Mr Taylor in the next yard. He seemed like a magician or alchemist, mixing materials. I noticed the intensity of his paying attention to the results. Houses were rigorously cleaned. Floors and wooden steps were scrubbed with a metal scraper. Cobwebs were swept away with “pointer brooms.” I doubt that spiders were pleased about this, no flies for Christmas dinner.
Walls received special attention. In our home I was my Dad’s apprentice, helping to lay wallpaper on our room divider he had made. Burlap had been stretched on the wooden frame and over the years succeeding layers of wallpaper made it become thicker. The pattern had to be carefully matched. This resulted in producing scraps which I used for covering exercise books for school. Mum boiled cassava starch which was applied on the room divider using house painting brushes. On the inner part we used pages from magazines. Some homes in the yard used newspaper as well. The frustrating part was trying to read the wall when sent on errands but illustrations helped to reduce my disappointment. Pages from the National Geographic magazine were revered but I hated reading an interesting article to see “continued on page…” and scrambling around to find it.
Varnishing chairs and table legs was another activity in the yard. I was sent to buy copal varnish from the nearest hardware store, which was d’Andrade’s in Murray Street (now Quamina). My Dad told me the owner was known as Kruger. Paul Kruger was a leader of the Boers in South Africa in their unsuccessful 1899-1902 war against Britain. Mr d’Andrade apparently was vocal in his support of the Boers.
Once again apprentice me was tasked. Old varnish was removed with caustic soda using cloth attached to a rod, followed by sandpapering then varnishing. Dad made sure I followed instructions. He told stories of visiting homes where the chair got up when you did because old varnish was only sanded down and not removed totally. He said that to avoid connecting with the chair you surreptitiously placed your handkerchief when the host or hostess was not looking. It was removed in the same manner
Activities in the yard increased. Children were running errands like dispatch riders. Housewives were hanging wet curtains and window blinds to dry on wires strung between poles.
The pervasive aroma in the yard became complex as Christmas day grew near. The first came from cakes being baked. Dad had made Mum a Dutch oven which meant she did not have to use the communal kitchen. Making a traditional black cake was a long process. My apprenticeship continued. First, that orange coloured salt butter was “washed” using a wooden pot spoon in a large basin. The water was changed until no salt remained. I was amazed to see the increase in volume because fat and water are not supposed to mix. It was the most tedious and unavoidable of jobs. The next one was better. Currants, raisins and prunes were bought and washed. When my Mum was not looking I checked to see if I was doing a good job. The testing was most enjoyable. The change came when seeds had to be removed from prunes. I was told to talk or whistle. I did manage however to cover a few prunes under the seeds. The final job was grinding the dried fruits using a hand mill—cleaning it afterwards compensated for the energy expended—before mixing all the “ingreasements ”, meaning ingredients, as my Aunt Iris used to say.
For making ginger beer I had to crack hard dried ginger with my Dad’s hammer and to learn how to dodge flying bits the way cowboys (John Wayne and Randolph Scott) did on cinema screen. I had to fill bottles with the ginger, sugar, cinnamon spice, cloves and Mum would add a tiny amount of yeast to make the mixture ferment. I have seen “Guyanese Ginger Beer” recipes on YouTube. Green ginger is used but no yeast. No yeast means no fermentation, therefore the product was ginger drink not beer.
Christmas Eve saw me and a few friends sent to Stabroek or Bourda Market to buy the “ingreasements” for pepper pot. My Mum preferred the latter, where I went to Mr.Snagg (real Dickensian name) to get the meat and cow heel. Having a fixation on how tools are used I was fascinated by the way he used a butcher’s saw, which I thought was really a big hacksaw, on the cow heel before splitting bones so the marrow would be more accessible. The delicate precision of cutting meat with a cutlass kept sharp as a razor also held my attention.
After homes had clean window blinds and curtains hung by the housewives, the communal kitchen was busy. For my family breakfast, we had garlic pork, homemade bread and real chocolate tea. The two East Indian families did not have garlic pork but did make pepper pot the main dish of Christmas day for everyone. Drinks involved preparing sorrel and ginger beer. Being offered the latter on visits could be adventurous because “sour ginger beer” was a possibility. Entire families did not visit each other but individuals did. “Fire one” was the call to use tiny Schnapp glasses for drinking rum, which was then chased with iced water. It was the Americans who changed the tradition by using fizzy drinks. In the words of the calypso, Rum and Coca Cola was the favoured mix.
Boys who had become teenagers were allowed during Christmas Eve to wear long pants, attend late cinema shows and eat at restaurants based on the limitations of their pocket money. Older boys experimented with smoking cigarettes. I had one try and never again, hating the way it affected my taste. For children, the day could produce mixed feelings—no toys or the ones they expected. I did not have the “cap gun” to play cowboy but my friend Noel Marshall did occasionally allow me to use his, once I produced the caps. This was a great relief from shouting “Pow! Pow!” during cowboy games. We did, however, share toys as far as this was possible, based on your relationships because this is when you knew who your real friends were..
Decades later I was reminded by Imran Mohamed how much he enjoyed a particular Christmas Day because my friends and I made music. Mr Cummings our next door neighbour also had his radio on full volume to fill the air with carols and of course Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” Little did he know that this was the only thing available to us.
