On the radio, Kelwyn Hutcheon sings the Everard Leon classic, “At Christmas Your Heart Goes Home.” Home for me is Trinidad, Port-of-Spain, Woodbrook, Corbeautown but at Christmas, my heart flies over the Gulf to Caracas.
It’s different now but in the 60s, even for a city like “Caracas, bella Caracas” (Caracas, beautiful Caracas), as it’s called by its inhabitants, and which used to be full of life and light and excitement throughout the year, the Christmas season was special.
Caracas is located in an Andean valley, 3,000 feet above sea level. It’s always a bit chilly, more so at night when jackets are necessary. Another name for the city is, “la Ciudad de los Caballeros” or the “City of Gentlemen,” because of this tradition of wearing jackets and ties, a tradition that died out in the mid-sixties.
Starting in December, the temperature often plummeted down to the 40s. Morning mist, frosty breath, chilled hands and noses under clear blue skies, the smell of pine trees and the towering presence of the Avila mountain, peaking 3,000 feet above us, 6,000 feet above sea level, and reached either by cable car or a lonely, winding forested path much favoured by courting couples, gave us a delicious feeling of fullness and awe.
Like Trinidad, there was always music in the air. At Christmas, the songs changed to aguinaldos, traditional, religious Christmas carols performed by groups of friends called parranderos or aguinalderos, who would travel around a town or village going from house to house serenading the people inside, in return for alcohol and food in what came to be known as the Parranda Navidena, the Christmas musical lime.
In the 60s, the parranda in the state of Zulia evolved into a separate, distinct type of Christmas music, the gaita zuliana and which, since then, has become the definitive genre of Venezuelan Christmas music and which has not caught on yet in Trinidad, where the aguinaldo parranda evolved into parang, which gave us soca parang and chutney parang. What effect the infusion of thousands of Venezuelans here will have on our parang, if any, isn’t clear. It may depend on how soon they return.
A fond memory that we have carried over to Christmas here in T&T, is the annual get together in the kitchen to make “Hallacas” or Venezuelan pastelles. Venezuela being such a large country, it’s land mass can easily occupy the entire Eastern Caribbean Sea from Trinidad to Antigua and halfway to Jamaica. Its geography varies enormously, from the valleys of the Northern Range, to the llanos of the central region, to the snow-capped mountains of the Andes, to the Tepuyes (tabletop mountains) of the Gran Savana, to the beaches of the coast, to the great lake of Maracaibo.
There are also at least five geographical variants of the “Hallaca” that I know of. My mother learned the Maracucha one, from Maracaibo, where many Trinis emigrated to work in the oil fields. We often forget this, even though their descendants, with surnames like Herrera and Sealey and Bravo, Bratt, Devonish, Phillips and Thomas, now consider themselves Venezuelans.
The hallaca was one of many different Venezuelan Christmas foods that made their way onto the Christmas table. Pan de jamon (bread infused with ham) that my daughter makes every year and the Spanish delicacy, turron or nougat, were indispensable smells and tastes. The look, smell and taste of panettone, the traditional Italian sweet bread, was an integral part of Christmas festivities in Caracas long before it arrived in Trinidad in the last decade, and our ponche de creme originated in Venezuela in the early 1900s, where it is known as ponche crema.
It all comes to a crescendo on Noche Buena (“Good Night” or Christmas Eve) at Midnight Mass, known as “la Misa de Gallo” or the Mass of the Cock, a mass all Venezuelans attend before returning home for a late dinner, the opening of gifts and the visiting of neighbours where multiple “sequites” are drunk. The Misa de Gallo is so named because, according to tradition, there was a cock in the stable where Mary birthed and he was the first to realise the Christ was born and so declared in song his early praise.
And if you don’t know what a “sequite” is, ask your elderly partner from Arima or Lopinot.
Perhaps I should end as I started but with the Venezuelan Christmas aguinaldo, “Corre Caballito,” that Venezuelan mothers sing to their children.
“Run little pony…we go to Bethlehem…for a child has been born covered with flowers!”
Music, food, drink, expressions, exchange of peoples, all are our familiar heritage.
We have more in common than we think. Our politicians must remember that.
