Christmas is at once the most hedonistic, commercialised, and holiest time of the year. Technically, the most important Christian day is Easter Sunday, the day of resurrection. Yet, even devout churchgoers generally pay more attention to Christmas than Easter. And even humbug scrooges find it hard to resist spirit-brightening festivities and gift-exchanging pleasures.

Politicians in other English-speaking liberal democracies understand that once they toss their hats into the ring, all aspects of their past and present lives will be put under a microscope.

When do two public holidays feel like no holiday at all? When one falls on a Saturday and the other in the middle of the workweek. Which is what Jamaicans are experiencing this year, with Emancipation Day on a Saturday - when most people don't work anyway - and Independence Day on a Thursday, meaning they have to work next day and so can't stay up late. No wonder the Emancipation vibe is so flat this year.

The 'greatest party in sports' - as the Caribbean Premier League bills itself - really is the greatest party in sports. As anyone who has been there can attest, there is no vibesier experience than a Jamaica Tallawahs match at Sabina Park. It's a simply wonderful combination of music, laughter, conversation and cricket lovely cricket. And kudos to the stadium shuttle bus system that made getting to Sabina such a breeze.

It is curious that in the current debate about senatorial independence no one is referencing the situation that obtained in the senate from 1997 to 2002.

Nearly all Jamaicans, apart from orange and green diehards, would like to see some independence of thought in our legislature. Alas, every single member of parliament since Independence has come from the PNP and JLP, and our Constitution stipulates 13 senators from the governing party and eight from the opposition party.

No other Jamaican has had such a profound international impact as Marcus Garvey has. In an era that treated the idea of black inferiority almost as a given fact, Garvey shouted "No!" in a voice heard across the planet. In Martin Luther King Jr's words, Garvey was "the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny ... . He gave us a sense of personhood, a sense of manhood, a sense of somebodiness."

Bob Nesta Marley is the most famous figure this country has produced. (Though Usain Bolt might be usurping him in places like China and India.) Mention Jamaica, and foreigners who scarcely know in which hemisphere the country is located will cry in recognition 'Bob Marley!'.

Louise 'Miss Lou' Bennett-Coverley is the most universally loved personality this nation has ever produced or likely will ever produce, engendering unabashed feelings of pride and affection in Jamaicans of all ages, colours, classes and creeds. For over 50 years, she tirelessly championed Jamaican folk customs on stage, radio and television. Miss Lou is also the most popular poet in this island's history, outselling all others put together.

In 1938, demonstrations swept across the island. The worldwide depression had made the normally hard life of the Jamaican peasant often intolerable.