Christmas is a BIG deal here. From what I understand, the Christmas festivities started about couple of weeks before I arrived. It began with something similar to similar to our idea of “spring cleaning” in which David’s family did a thorough scrubbing of their entire house. When I arrived, all of the furniture was stacked in a corner of the main room and covered with sheets.
A few days before Christmas, the neighborhood community put on a Christmas show complete with a nativity skit, tree lighting, singing, dancing, and Santa Claus giving out gifts to all of the children in the village. David played Joseph in the nativity skit, and he of course did a great job. In fact, he was the only person in the entire skit to remember his lines!
The day before Christmas was spent putting the house back together, putting down new floors (the floors here are kind of like wallpaper- big sheets of decorative plastic that they tape to the ground), hanging new drapes, and cooking.
There are two special dishes made for Christmas—Pepper Pot and Black Cake. David describes Pepper Pot as the Guyanese version of tsimmus. It is essentially a huge pot of meat stew that is cooked for an extended period of time until the meat is tender and juicy. I unfortunately had a hard time consuming this dish, as I went to the butcher to pick up the meat with David’s host sister, and was fairly overwhelmed by the lack of sanitation of it all. (I’m sure it was just fine to eat, but I am squeamish about eating meat that has been sitting out 90-degree temperatures for extended periods of time). Unsurprisingly, this didn’t stop David from consuming hoards of the dish for days. Black cake is the second special food cooked for Christmas, and is essentially a dark fruitcake made with candied fruits, cherries, 5 finger, other rum-soaked fruits, more rum, burnt sugar and malt drink. As with all of the food here, there is LOTS of sugar in all of it.
With all of the work put into decoration of the house and preparation of the food, I expected that the extended family would come together on Christmas day to celebrate. Oddly enough, Christmas day was the most laid back and uneventful day of my entire time here. No one came over, and the immediate family sat inside watching old Christmas movies and eating here and there (meals here are not eaten together here, everyone just makes up a plate of food when they’re hungry). Though it was nothing like I expected, I actually really enjoyed the day relaxing and hanging out with David’s host family.
With all of the work put into decoration of the house and preparation of the food, I expected that the extended family would come together on Christmas day to celebrate. Oddly enough, Christmas day was the most laid back and uneventful day of my entire time here. No one came over, and the immediate family sat inside watching old Christmas movies and eating here and there (meals here are not eaten together here, everyone just makes up a plate of food when they’re hungry). Though it was nothing like I expected, I actually really enjoyed the day relaxing and hanging out with David’s host family.
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| Setting up for the nativity skit |
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| The Christmas show |
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| Santa giving gifts to the children |
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