Christmas is here already and with it the madness that is prevalent every year. It is undoubtedly the best time of the year. It is the time when adults become children and when children actually get a reason to fool their parents. It is the time when members of the business community lick their chops because at Christmas time they earn about 50 per cent of the profits they make all year.
For one reason or the other Christmas has defied just about everything thrown at it with a view to minimising it. It defied the Communists in Russia where for decades Christianity was reduced to a secret religion. It defied Communism in Cuba where people are now coming back to the fold after many decades of atheism.
In Guyana , the late President Forbes Burnham even attempted to downplay Christmas in favour of Mashramani. He failed. People simply went about their merry way and did what they had been doing all their lives.
The one time the people of Guyana did not have a Christmas was in 2001 when the election disturbances and a call from the late President Desmond Hoyte to the people to save their money actually took effect.
That was the time when the businessmen really got hurt and complained. They had invested heavily and ended up holding a lot of stock that they would normally have sold at a handy profit. They had to wait for the succeeding year.
In the days of yore the first Christmas carols hit the airwaves on November 15. That was a signal for people to lose whatever sanity they had. It was the time when they planned to make that house bright. Peeping Tom still ribs me about the one pint of paint and two gallons of turpentine I bought to paint my house that year not so long ago.
Although varnish is not in vogue I still imagine smelling varnish whenever Christmas comes around. As a child my mother would have us scrub the chairs and tables in the house and then wipe them down before applying the varnish.
In school we spent the last two days scrubbing the desks and benches and that was fun. It was about the only time in the year when everyone worked collectively. There was something about the Christmas feeling that brought everyone together.
In the Anglican church I attended it was no different. The elders would take down all those brass objects and it was up to us, the servers, and those dedicated women to give them a sound polish with either Brasso or Shinio. On Christmas morning when there was midnight mass, the church looked exceedingly bright.
In those days St Jude's Anglican was not electrified so people would bring their gas lanterns from home. That was another exciting exercise. The light from the lantern served to pilot our many feet along the dusty, pot-holed roadway and at the same time, let some of us realise that there were others on the roadway to church.
But the greatest joy was in the window shopping. People would leave their homes miles away in the country to travel to the city to look at the various adornments in the show windows. Needless to say, they always caught the eyes of us the little ones and made us realise that there was so much to living that we could not wait to grow up.
In those days the last boat would cross the river at about seven in the evenings during the normal week and at ten on Saturdays. During the Christmas season there were always late boats and late trains.
There were no gunmen and robbers although there must have been the perennial pick pockets. People were not afraid to walk the length and breadth of Water Street that was much more developed that it is today. Violence and the attendant fires have put paid to the beauty of Water Street .
During those days of window shopping we, the children, saw the toys that we dreamed of having and we fervently believed that if we behaved ourselves then Santa Claus would heed our wishes.
These days there is not much more to look forward to than the Christmas music on the airwaves and the television advertisements. These days, too, it is as if the announcers cannot wait for the arrival of November. This year I heard Christmas music from as early as mid October.
These are still early days and we are not yet being bombarded by the voices of all those crooners and the new breed of West Indian singers who have added our own distinct flavour to what they see as a true West Indian Christmas.
What many of us do not as yet realise is that the things to which we have grown accustomed have become so much more expensive. Over the past few months the prices simply crept up on us without announcement—not that there would be any since there are no price controls.
My daughter recently informed me that the money she spent a few months ago to supply the home is simply not enough. I could not understand it since there was no adjustment to the currency rate and since there were no new import taxes. There were no announced pay increases and above all, the businessmen could not complain about rising overhead costs since they were busy reducing staff to cut costs.
Perhaps the rising water bills and the light bills have been such that they have decided to pass on those increases to the consumer who is already faced with his own light and water bills.
This Christmas I could imagine what the prices are going to be like. Chicken, a staple in our society, is already fetching a price that none of us ever dreamed it would reach when the government decided to grant the local poultry producers carte blanche to produce chicken.
I remember attending the meeting between Manzoor Nadir and the poultry producers. I remember the expressed fears that the local producers would now seize the opportunity to do as they please and the promise that this would not be the case.
Someone once told me that a promise is a comfort to a fool. The then promise by the poultry producers was simply that. Pork is going to cost more because not as many people rear pigs as they did when I was a boy, when pigs roamed the streets and every neighbour's yard.
Green vegetables are going to be cheap as usual as will be the fish that always seems to give way to the other meats at Christmas time.
Then even before we get the Christmas spirit out of our system we will have VAT. Almost everyone is afraid of VAT. The word is that it will present untold hardships for the ordinary consumer, a claim that the government and the Guyana Revenue Authority are stoutly rejecting.
Indeed, the businessmen are angry because although the system is going to save them from having to pay bribes (the truth is that they did not mind paying the bribe because in the long run they paid less taxes and duties than they really should have). These businessmen are going to be paying their fair share of taxes and knowing that, I am certain that they are going to collect their VAT well in advance of the implementation of the official system.
So this Christmas is going to be a little more costly that those past and while I am on this, the government has made no move to announce that familiar pay hike that it normally does at this time. Perhaps with the elections over, there is no need to appease the suffering electorate.