Den­zil Mo­hammed

My bud­dy David is liv­ing it up in the UK. He loves his work, is sport­ing brands store work­ers wouldn't even al­low me to touch, and every time we speak he's in a new coun­try. His job takes him all over Eu­rope, Asia, Africa and the Mid­dle East. His heart takes him back home.

He sent me a text mes­sage from his ho­tel room on Fri­day. It said: "In Sau­di Ara­bia. Just or­dered cur­ry chick­en, roti and a Pep­si for din­ner!!!"

Yes, for a white boy David did al­ways like he In­di­an thing. David al­so sent me my Christ­mas card in the mail–ear­ly, as usu­al. The Christ­mas card I have for him has been stuck in my port­fo­lio for, oh, about 13 months now.

Scrunter vs Daisy

Again, I told my­self I'll buy greet­ing cards ear­ly this year and send them out post-haste. Again, I got too caught up in work and life and love to do it. So I'll do what I did last year: send e-mail and e-cards to all of my friends near and far, each per­son­alised, of course, but all vir­tu­al–in­tan­gi­ble, an im­age and text on a com­put­er screen. It seems to be a giv­en that peo­ple who move away from this place wouldn't give up that move for the world. It al­so seems to be a giv­en that there's some­thing about T&T those peo­ple will nev­er for­get no mat­ter where they are in the world.

And when it comes to Tri­ni Christ­mas, es­pe­cial­ly, there is some­thing about it that is one-of-a-kind, un­for­get­table and un­at­tain­able–haunt­ing to the point of lin­ger­ing well be­yond the city lights and stars and stripes.

As part of the gieN­ET­WORK mag­a­zine's Christ­mas is­sue, free in to­mor­row's T&T Guardian, we asked teenagers what's spe­cial about a Tri­ni Christ­mas. They all said the same things: sor­rel, pastelle and parang, in­clud­ing singers like Scrunter. Much the same things the old peo­ple might say.

But the old peo­ple might swap Scrunter for Daisy, and would al­so talk about things teenagers don't even know about: chang­ing cur­tains the night be­fore Christ­mas and keep­ing the house in dark­ness so the neigh­bours won't see your fan­cy stuff un­til just the right time; var­nish­ing the floors so soon be­fore the hol­i­day that, even on Christ­mas morn­ing, you can't walk around be­cause it's still dry­ing; wait­ing un­til Christ­mas Eve night to bake light sponge cake and heavy black cake; get­ting the whole fam­i­ly around to press pastelles; go­ing house-to-house singing car­ols and hear­ing in the dis­tance a parang side at some­body's house; re­ceiv­ing Christ­mas cards in the mail; the coskel trees with the five-way flash­ing bulbs that chook you in your foot if you step on them...

They're all on the list: the list of things lost, things re­mem­bered, things changed, things that made Tri­ni Christ­mas spe­cial. What ex­ists now, the old peo­ple say, isn't re­al­ly Tri­ni Christ­mas. It's a wa­tered-down Christ­mas or, worse yet, an Amer­i­can­ised Christ­mas. My sis­ter and I broached this idea to my moth­er: in­stead of stress­ing out your­self every De­cem­ber with all of that cook­ing since we've grown up and moved on, why don't you just or­der pastelles and black cake? We don't even like black cake. In fact, you still have last year's black cake in the freez­er.

Mom near­ly had a stroke, and we got delist­ed from her will. That's not the way you do Christ­mas, she re­tort­ed. Christ­mas is spe­cial, and part of that spe­cial-ness is prepar­ing all these things for you and your fam­i­ly.

What re­mains?

I thought of Nap­py May­ers' Bring Back the Old Time Days. With near­ly every­thing in life, so­ci­ety and cul­ture, there is this lin­ger­ing nos­tal­gia and a right­eous­ness of the ways of the past: that things were not just dif­fer­ent, but bet­ter. I ex­pe­ri­enced it even at UWI: the cul­ture was dif­fer­ent, the grounds were green­er and clean­er, the stu­dents were not waste­ful of their op­por­tu­ni­ty at ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion...

And cer­tain­ly that spe­cial-ness of Tri­ni Christ­mas is root­ed in im­ages of Daisy croon­ing on stage with her tiny bou­quet; of car­ol singers go­ing from one house to the next, their faces lit on­ly by can­dle­light; the whole fam­i­ly press­ing pastelles and beat­ing cake mix on Christ­mas Eve; the smell of fresh­ly var­nished floors and crisp, new cur­tains on Christ­mas morn­ing...

But Daisy is dead, and those things are gone. What re­mains?

Peo­ple of­ten say Christ­mas is for chil­dren. If this is so, then these things must nec­es­sar­i­ly be root­ed in the past as mem­o­ries. And just as Daisy is dead, and just as chil­dren grow up and move out and move on, so too must time ef­fect change on the tra­di­tions we hold so dear. The old peo­ple might spurn an e-card, but it means the same as one writ­ten by hand. It is still done with time and ef­fort and vest­ed with thought and mean­ing.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, as much as some might think they pro­mote a new kind of il­lit­er­a­cy, in­vari­ably bring us clos­er, faster, than ever be­fore. On my birth­day, I got few phone calls and cer­tain­ly no house vis­its. But there were more than two Web pages' worth of wish­es and greet­ings from friends around the world on my Face­book wall. That meant some­thing. Life con­stant­ly pro­gress­es. So­ca creeps in but main­tains that parang beat. Peo­ple get busier and or­der to save time, but eat the same pastelles and black cake. The lights turn white and rid them­selves of those treach­er­ous spikes, but dec­o­rate a beau­ti­ful Christ­mas tree nonethe­less.

What­ev­er the changes, the re­minders are there and the mem­o­ries linger–as strong as the smell of ham and pastelle. Wher­ev­er we go in the world, mem­o­ries are the things that make Tri­ni Christ­mas spe­cial. In fact, things have changed so much, that some­times you can even get the re­al thing, like cur­ry chick­en and roti in Sau­di Ara­bia.