Through the Eyes of a Child: Memories of Christmases Past in Jamaica

I have fond memories of my childhood growing up in Jamaica in the 40s and 50s. Christmas was a festive season, embraced by all, rich and poor. By the first week of December, you could feel the spirit of Christmas in the air. All the shops and bars were decorated, and the churches were all preparing for their Christmas services and special holiday concerts.

I have vivid memories of participating in Christmas plays at the Baptist Church and the local Salvation Army Church. One special year, I was cast in the role of Joseph, father of Jesus, in the church’s Christmas play. But my local stardom came by way of my performances  – singing and dancing –  at the Salvation Army Chapel where I, little Maxie, was a main attraction. The nurturing I received from the staff at this charity was a formative part of my childhood. Everyone was welcome and I have fond memories of my education and play within the safety of their establishment.

The Jamaica of the 40s and 50s was a society burdened by a classicism that was also about racism and complexionism. More often than not, the whiter, white-passing (or non-African) Jamaicans were the wealthier Jamaicans, a recipe for disastrous social bias which impacted all spheres of society and moments of the year, including holidays like Christmas. Indeed, although Christmas was for many the happiest time of year, it was experienced in starkly different ways depending upon your class, race, and complexion.

I must remind the millennials that I am talking about a moment where many of us had no TV, only rare access to black and white movies in the theatres, and nothing called a home computer, smart phone, or social media. Radio was king, the national medium of communication. But only the rich could afford one.

For poor people, the Christmas entertainment that we most looked forward to was the village masquerade band or John Canoe (Jonkonnu). The local people who comprised these bands were  brilliant and creative musicians, often self-taught. They created stunning costumes that looked like animals and original dances that transfixed their audiences. My favourites were the bull cow, the horse head, and Santa Claus himself. These mesmerizing characters were the main attraction. The dress, adornment, and carefully choreographed movements were beautiful to behold.

As my daughter, Charmaine has written about in her book Slavery, Geography, and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica (2016), these traditions were of course born out of Transatlantic Slavery, a time when our enslaved ancestors – largely denied leisure time – were given only a few days around Christmas Day and New Year’s Day to celebrate the season. In a world where the enslaved were commonly malnourished (due to diets largely devoid of protein), dangerously overworked, and strategically materially deprived, we must understand their participation in such festivities, not as frivolities, but as defiant acts of resistance through which they asserted their humanity, their rights to laughter, happiness, and joy, and a means through which they preserved and transformed their African heritage into African Jamaican-ness.

Importantly too, Jonkonnu also originally included enslaved performers’ audacious parodies of white plantation culture. As the text and images of the Jewish Jamaican Isaac Mendes Belisario documented in his Sketches of Character (1837-38), enslaved performers donned elaborate, intricate, and colourful costumes which incorporated things like regal headdresses with bird feathers or miniature replicas of plantation houses and coupled them with whiteface. This whiteface entailed covering their own faces with white masks designed to ridicule the European and European-American cultures and aesthetics that their enslavers had forced upon them.

The audacity, creativity, and beauty of their costumes and critiques must also be understood in this light, since to be an enslaved person meant that you and your community were strategically deprived and denied the materials to represent yourselves.

People came from miles to listen to the African drumbeats, to see the dances and costumes, and to follow these bands of performers for miles along the main roads of their villages. These performances were the soundtracks and main fixtures of my Christmas holidays. As a child in a poor family, I learned early that only rich people’s children got toys and other presents. The fleeting gifts of firecrackers and balloons were the gifts that one received when your parents could not afford store-bought toys.

One Christmas, at the age of eight or nine, my present was a lone balloon. When I blew it up, it burst almost immediately. I can still recall my excruciating pain at the disaster. In my innocent child’s mind, it felt as though my Christmas dreams had been shattered. The pain I felt was only amplified as I stood at the fence of a wealthy family’s home and watched, transfixed as the children laughed and rode their tricycles. I stood spellbound, watching and hoping that they’d invite me to play with them. They did not and as I gazed at them in open amazement, my wise Aunt Amy, gently took my small hand in hers and led me away from the fence. Looking back, I am sure she was motivated by love and a desire to shield me from the hurt and longing she must have seen in my eyes.

But negative experiences can result in positive actions and outcomes. After feeling the excruciating pangs of loss and lack and witnessing the glorious things that my own humble family could not provide, I immediately began to save my own money for the next Christmas. Every penny that I earned from running errands for family members and neighbours or selling pop bottles was saved towards my goal – a real Christmas toy. My hard work paid off! I remember distinctly buying a fashionable and modern wind-up toy, a police officer figure riding a motor bike. It brought me great joy! I would wind up my toy and watch as it rode down the main road of my village. My toy was so modern and beautiful that it even garnered the admiration of adults. Imagine then how disappointed I felt when my younger brother Keith (real name Samuel, named after my Grandpa Harry, real name Samuel) recklessly destroyed my toy. To understand my suffering, you must understand that this police man action figure was my only toy. As with many of today’s privileged children, there was no chest full of toys, games, and books stashed away for me in a well-appointed bedroom. I was devastated and it took me a long time to forgive my careless brother’s thoughtless actions.

As time passed and I entered adolescence and then manhood, I never lost my zeal for Christmas. It grew stronger as I reveled in my ability to buy nice gifts for my loved ones and for myself. Once I had children of my own, I always strove to make their Christmases special. My wife and I always bought them the best presents that we could afford, and we would awake – typically at the crack of dawn – to excited children anticipating what awaited them under the Christmas tree.

Now as an octogenarian, I still happily await another Christmas as I also look back fondly on Christmases past. I hope it is the same for you.