CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS

 ----So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

Have you fattened your cow, goat or chicken for the centrepiece of your Christmas feast? And if you will be making Black Pudding, you must leave something aside.

Have you chopped your fruits for your Christmas Black Cake? Remember they must be soaked in wine for at least a few weeks.

Have you also soaked your ginger and started preparations for your sorrel? You know ginger beer and sorrel drink take first place at Christmas. And of course Spice! Your friends are looking forward to tasting that rum, lightly flavoured with the fruits and spices that it has been mixed with for months.

You couldn't have forgotten because from late November the sounds of bamboo bursting night after night, should have been your reminder. Did you go out to see the boys and men in the neighbourhood hollow out bamboo to make cannons, carefully choose sticks to use as fuses and fill a bottle with kerosene and plug it with a rag to make a lantern? Did you stay to see them raise the front end of the bamboo on stones, pour kerosene in the top, put the fuse in the other end and light it with the lantern? Did you jump as the resulting boom echoed through the neighbourhood?

Or were you reminded by the Sewenal? Although it doesn't happen as often, some areas still see groups serenading the neighbourhood with Creole songs from mid-December, with the banjo, shack-shack, bottles and nails. Do they still chant the Abwe with no musical accompaniment on Christmas Eve?

Now that you have caught the Christmas spirit, listening to bamboo bursting in the chilly evenings, waking up to even colder mornings and shopping around for your decorations, gifts and Christmas eats and drinks, are you looking forward to the big day?

Will you be one of those following the tradition of starting Christmas Day with Midnight Mass? Although introduced by our English and French colonial rulers, it is now all ours. Many who haven't gone to church for the entire year, will want to experience that special feeling at Midnight Mass, especially at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Castries, which will be overflowing with people.

If you're not one of those to start your celebrating immediately with friends, you will probably be awakened by a Sewenal as groups go door to door early in the morning to share your Christmas cheer. And even though you grated those cocoa sticks and cooked up that coco tea, nice and thick with flour and spices, you know that's not what they're looking for.

But of course you'll serve the spice, because the Pai Banan with their suits of rustling dry banana leaves; the Toes with their painted faces, carrying poles with big feet at the top,; Mary Assent with her big belly and big behind; and Papa Jab dressed in his red suit and threatening the children with his pitchfork; will wine enough to earn their drinks.

But you will be happy that they woke you up early because you must start cooking your dasheen, yam (especially the nice white baja that's only available this time of year), plantain, etc. Are you one of the people who must cook something on your coals in your coal-pot at Christmas? 

But however you cook it, what will really make all the work worthwhile is for friends and relatives to drop by and celebrate with you because friends and family are what make Christmas… and tradition.