Christmas in Guyana: Its Preparation and Celebration

Written By: The Rev. Dr. Henry A. Chan

As portrayed in its national anthem, Guyana is “One land of six peoples, united and free”.  In this tropical country, formerly known as British Guiana, the main thrust of the celebration of Christmas in Guyana is to have the best home prepared for the Christ Child.  The home has two dimensions.  It is external as well as internal.

First, the external home is the physical home.  From early November, new curtains and chair coverings are made or, at the least, the old ones are washed and ironed.  The same is true for bed sheets and pillowcases.  Furniture is also stripped of varnish and polish from the previous year, sandpapered and refinished.

During an ordinary day, the streets of the cities and towns are bustling with people and traffic engaged in economic activity.  This increases considerably during the month of December.  The supply chains were put into gear months earlier and as shopping progresses for Christmas preparation, merchants would have their goods overflowing onto the street curb under the watchful eyes of employees.

No celebration of Christmas in Guyana is complete without food and drink.  Usually, two types of cake are made, one with red cherries and raisins and the other, known as “black cake” because of its color, is made with minced prunes and raisins which are soaked in rum since the beginning of the year.  Local drinks are made separately from ginger, sun-dried sorrel, and the Mauby bark, and wine from the jamoon fruit.

Ham is imported and, as such, is purchased especially for Christmas in Guyana.  If the ham is smoked and preserved for shipping, it is boiled for several hours in a huge pot or a tin can.  If it is pre-cooked, it is baked in the oven.  In both cases, after the ham is cooked, it is decorated with clove for its special flavor and scent.  On Christmas morning, the first meal is eaten with freshly baked bread which is served with ham and Worcestershire Sauce and/or mustard. Also served with bread are pepperpot and garlic pork.  Pepperpot is made primarily of beef and pork which are cooked with casareep, an extract from the cassava root.  This dish is indigenous to the Amerindians who are Guyana’s native Indians.  Garlic pork, I am told, comes from the Madeirans who came to some of the British colonies in the West Indies, including Guyana, mainly in the 1840’s.  Garlic pork is made by marinating pork in garlic and other spices mixed with vinegar, cured for at least a few days, then fried.

It is said that on Christmas Day in Queens, New York where there are communities of Guyanese-Americans, even with the windows and doors tightly shut because of the winter’s cold, you can still tell from the street which house a Guyanese lives in from the smell of the highly spiced pepperpot and garlic pork.

Starting very early in the afternoon of Christmas Day, in many villages of Guyana, there are the traditional traveling masquerade bands and steel bands which provide entertainment along a four or five mile stretch of road.  The masquerade bands consist of people, dressed in colorful costumes, who dance to the beat of drums.  Some of these costumes include “Mother Sally”, who is someone dressed in a long dress with a straw hat and dances on tall wooden stilts; and “The Cow” worn over the shoulder of a person, who dances as well as charges at children jumping out of the way for the fun of it.  Later, the steel band with people playing the steel drums, comes along and is followed by a crowd from the villages as they dance in the street.

Occasionally, members of the masquerade and steel bands would stop at the home of someone they know well to get a brief rest.  They usually go into the home to have schnapps of rum and “cutters” which would be pieces of ham or cheese or something else that has some salt in it.  Then off they would go again.

So far, we have considered the external home.  But there is the internal home too.  The Collect for the fourth Sunday of Advent in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition states, “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself…”.  While this prayer pertains primarily to the Second Coming of Christ, to Guyanese, Christmas is an opportunity to practice for that Coming at the end of time as well as celebrate the remembrance of the First Coming.  Preparation of the inner home for the Christ Child at Christmas is central to the spirituality of the season.  Wherever there are Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day Services, every effort is made by Guyanese Christians to attend at least one of the worship Services.  The ham, pepperpot and garlic pork can wait until after worship.

Let’s not forget too, that as Christmas approaches, Sunday School children are taught the significance of the Gospel stories on the Birth of Jesus, the Savior of the world.  Occasionally, a Sunday School might even take up the challenge of putting on a Christmas Pageant.

For Guyanese, Christmas is symbolic of new birth within one’s soul as well as the remembrance of the birth of the baby, Jesus, not in a hospital or home, but in a manger, poor and lowly.  Consequently, there are resolutions that are made to live a more Christ-centered life.  Now, how long these resolutions remain in effect is another thing.  Maybe, that is why we also make New Year’s resolutions.

I have given a synopsis of the meaning, preparation and celebration of Christmas in Guyana, a former British colony. However, some of these elements could possibly be found in other former British colonies, in the West Indies and elsewhere.  Nevertheless, the pepperpot remains unique to Guyana.

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Bio:

The Rev. Dr. Henry Chan was born in Guyana, South America, and migrated to the U.S.A. as a young man in 1967.  He worked in information processing in the areas of programming, systems analysis, systems design and long-range planning.  Since his ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in 1983, he served as a full-time parish priest in the Diocese of Long Island, New York until his retirement in 2008.  What an exciting transition it was — from working with machines to working with people!!!