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Diaspora looking in…I MISS MY GUYANESE STYLE CHRISTMAS
By Ralph Seeram
Thousands of Guyanese worldwide are now heading home for the Christmas holidays. The planes are coming from cities such as New York, Toronto, Miami, London and the Caribbean Islands filled with Guyanese looking forward for a nostalgic Christmas with their relatives and friends.
I envy those returning since I won’t be among them and it depresses me. In fact Christmas in the only season I yearn to be in Guyana. I get very nostalgic this time of the year. I really miss my Guyanese style Christmas.
It is not for the lack of the traditional Guyanese Christmas dishes. We do prepare our pepperpot, roast and garlic pork, fruit cake and of course black cake as well as ginger beer and sorrel drinks. Most of these are prepared from authentic Guyanese recipes.
I mean, besides my 86-year-old mother, you can’t get any more authentic than “What’s cooking in Guyana “cookbook, and I do have the very first 1973 edition.
Little did Magna Pollard and her Carnegie School of Home Economics know that thirty-seven years later they would be helping Guyanese around the world keep their Christmas tradition culinary wise.
So what’s missing that makes me a little depress at Christmas? I am blessed that I have all my immediate family to celebrate Christmas. When I resided in New York my regular house guest at Christmas time was that great Guyanese cultural icon, the late Wordswotrh Mc Andrew.
With Mac around you would feel that were transported to Guyana. He would regale you with Guyanese stories, demonstrate the masquerade dance for the kids, and do some Christmas caroling while imbibing some good old Guyanese rum.
It was friends like Mac that I miss. For all those Guyanese returning home, it is really to enjoy the company of their friends and relatives. For me it’s more friends than family. I would really like to spend Christmas day having a “drink” with Adam, Mara and Gregory while enjoying some garlic and roast pork “cutters”.
One may wonder why those three. Truth is their friendship goes way back and has stood the test of time.
Celebrating Christmas back then was all about family, neighbours and friends. I recall that my parents and a particular neighbour were not on “speaking terms” for years, but on Boxing Day they were invited into our home; they in turn reciprocated. After the holiday was over it was back to “not on speaking terms”. Where else in the world would you find such a unique tradition?
It is the only time your neighbours would feel insulted if they invited you and you refused. Fast forward to the present. Where I live, I do not even know the neighbour who lives two houses away from me. In fact, I live on a cul-de-sac with six house not more than two hundred feet away, and believe me or not, I only know and speak to one.
Trust me when I say that it is not for a lack of social skills on my part.
Nobody walks in the neighbourhood; they drive by and give you a wave and you wave back. That is the extent of the interaction with my neighbours.
I can tell you this; one of them got the aroma of my garlic pork frying one Christmas morning and could not resist asking me the next day what I was cooking because it smelled great.
Recently, I have been coming around to the philosophy that one should not procrastinate on the things one would like to do. Why do it later when you can do it now. I have made up my mind, and with the blessing of the good Lord.
I am determined to spend Christmas 2011 in Guyana. Come early next year I will be making my reservation with, who? Don’t tell me that I am stuck with them again. Well the food situation may improve with them. Besides I am loyal so I will make my reservation with Caribbean Airlines. So Mara, Gregory and Adam save the date I will be spending Christmas with you guys come 2011.
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