A seventy five year old Christomo Araujo has spent over 40-years in Goa before he moved to Miami. He remembers how way back back then, Margao was his place to get some hay, pick up some sweets and celebrate a jolly Christmas in his village in Chinchinim. But he says he hates to come to Goa during Christmas as everything is overpriced, sold out and the crowds are too much to handle.
“ I remember we would find a few women who would sell traditional Goan sweets like doce, kulkuls, neuris, bebinca and dodol. But fewer people would buy and these were high quality homemade products but today women don’t seem to have time and these shops in the New market now take bulk orders compromising on the taste and pricing them very exorbitantly,” assert Janita Concesao from Varca.
Similar to Janita is Lerwis Fernandes, another senior citizen who struggles to electricity shops in Gandhi market. Lerwis explains that he and his aging wife have to struggle amongst themselves to set up the house while his son and his family who are Portuguese passport holders will return home only on Christmas Eve.
He explains to us how the cost of all the lights is very high in the market and most are lackluster, cheap quality goods coming in unchecked from China.
But Margao’s businessmen are also grumbling about the drop in business.
“ Earlier lots of British families had rented apartments in Colva and along the coast. Even Goans would come and purchase stars, decorations with a lot of enthusiasm. But the tourism season looks terrible and there are no foreign customers. Even amongst Goans, people work till December 24 evening and hence there is hardly any time to shop and set up their homes. Christmas has become a small formality and the celebration is dwindling,” explain Julio Souza who sells Christmas decoration in the Margao market.
Blame it on no tourism, no mining and lack of industry or people’s routine lives but Margao doesn’t seem to have the cheer of door to door caroling or the sense of coming together and having Community Christmas events like in the last decade.
“ Blame it on the vertical homes and buildings which eliminate the joy of caroling from one home to another like before and also the bad traffic and unsafe environment that doesn’t allow us to send our kids unattended to roam and carol in the streets with their friends,” explains Jonathan Lobo who has an eight year old child.
Similar to Jonathan’s complains are that of Melbo Rodrigues from Navelim who tells us that there are no open spaces for nice traditional cribs to be made and the only ones erected today are the ones paid for by politicians, so the sense of coming together and doing something as a community ahead of Christmas is something Margao seems to have lost.
People in Margao reminiscence about their old days when the Holy Spirit Church square was vibrant and filled with energy but the mixed crowd today in Margao doesn’t seem to have that same zeal to celebrate Christmas traditionally, explains Felice Souza, who compares the Christmas he celebrated in his childhood in Margao around 24 years back to the Christmas of today which is about buyng lights, installing them and putting a star outside which he says is terrible.
