Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine - December 2020

Caribbean
Christmases
of Old
by Arlene Walrond
While I have enjoyed Christmas experiences in other places, they do not
compare with Christmas in my homeland, Trinidad. As a local song says, “Trini
Christmas is the best!”
People came from all over for a taste
of my grandmother’s Christmas wine
Some say that the season is too commercialized, and I believe that’s true, but
the love is still there. A lot of Hindus and even some Muslims celebrate
Christmas in Trinidad, at least as far as gift giving and decorating goes. Of
course some people go overboard with decorations. Once I saw an entire house
covered in lights from roof to foundation. I don’t know how the occupants got
in and out without tripping on the wires or crushing some bulbs. In some
areas you’d swear you were in America for all the plastic snowmen on the
lawns and reindeer on the roof.
For me nothing can beat the Caribbean Christmases of old. I remember my
father buying our ham wrapped in pitch, weeks before Christmas. This would
hang from a rafter in our kitchen (which was a separate building from our
house) until Christmas Eve, when it would be boiled. And while the ham was
boiling the bread and cakes and pone would be in the brick oven. Ginger beer
and sorrel would be prepared. My grandmother made a mean rice wine in a large
earthenware jar. The wine was strained and decanted into smaller glass jars on
Christmas Eve. After the wine was strained, the residue in the jar — rice, raisins
and pieces of oranges — were thrown in the yard, and the fowls would eat it and
get drunk and stagger all over the place: a big joke for us kids at the time. People
came from all over for a taste of my grandmother’s Christmas wine, even two
Muslim brothers, Hamroon and Kamroon.
The week before Christmas, it fell on us kids to scrape and sand the furniture
in preparation for new varnish. Everything had to be spick and span — new
wallpaper, new curtains, new sheets on the beds, new pajamas. And being good
Catholics, everything had to be in order before we left home for midnight mass
on Christmas Eve night.
Christmas Day was probably the only time we children ever got out of bed
early without any prompting. Our presents would be in a pillowcase beneath our
homemade tree with its homemade decorations. My mother was good at that.
With some angel hair and coloured crêpe paper and a branch from a guava tree,
together with some of our teeny pre-Christmas toys, she made magic happen.
Another facet of the old days that I liked was door-to-door carolling; I really
miss that. In some villages, where remnants of the culture of our Spanish
Parang groups
would go from
house to house
serenading the
inhabitants.
colonisers were still alive, parang groups would go from house to house
serenading the inhabitants, some of whom would invite them in to partake of
the holiday fare. I had the pleasure of experiencing that once when I spent the
holidays at an uncle’s house.
Most people stayed home on Christmas Day, but from Boxing Day until New
Year’s Day (and sometimes beyond), friends and neighbours would visit one
another, and relatives from far away would make their annual visit and stay a few
days.
And when it was all over, the ham bone would be used to flavour a pot of pelau
or soup, then the good dishes would be returned to the cabinet until the next
year when the whole ritual would start all over again.
We’re celebrating Caribbean Compass’s 25th Anniversary Silver Jubilee Year
by sharing favorite articles from past issues. A version of this article appeared in
December 2005.
MYMARIOS.COM
DECEMBER 2020 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 23