Dear Editor,

On December 25, 2007 (SN), I read letters entitled, ‘The message of Christmas should be carried into the new year’ by an unnamed writer, and ‘Make Christmas for the chidren’ by Leon Jameson Suseran.

They both gererally expressed the joyous feeling brought about by the effect of Christmas celebration, and said that it should last beyond the limit of December 25. This is a fact not only in Guyana but in the Caribbean and beyond.

What really gets most people into the ‘celebration’ is the commercialism. There is also the magnet of our cultural foods and songs which get us into the celebration. Just recently I tried to make a connection between the birth of Christ and our Palakale fete that usually starts immediately after the midnight mass in our villages in the Rupununi, for example, and which lasts into the new year once there is enough brew or marriages taking place in the villages.

There is no commercialism of toys, fairy lights, Christmas trees, or fashion, but the villagers prepare themselves for this festive season ahead by securing food/meat/fish, and of course their natural brew – palakale or Paiwale – that would last them for a week. There are already people who are already extending that merriment into the new year.

My mind could not miss our black cake, sponge-cake, ginger-beer and pepperpot. Like our villagers in the Rupununi the coastlanders prepare their fruits and their meats long before the celebration to get the right taste. Even though there is no connection to the real meaning of Christmas, it certainly brings us culturally together.

We can certainly have ‘Happy Holidays’ throughout the year if we celebrate the religious festivals of our Hindu, Muslim and even Baha’i brothers and sisters, once we recognize the importance of and give respect to each other’s religion as children of One God.

Happy Holidays!

Yours faithfully,

Guy Marco