Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

For the lovers of bread, ham, and sor­rel, there are six days left un­til Christ­mas. While many Tri­nis are us­ing this time to clean their homes and shop for gifts, oth­ers are hop­ing to keep up with tra­di­tions that have been slow­ly dis­ap­pear­ing.

Lennox Di­az, 67, who hails from San­gre Grande, smiled when he talked about cook­ing ham and black cake with his fam­i­ly. He sees Christ­mas as be­ing in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to cook­ing and said it must be spent with fam­i­ly for it to be tru­ly Christ­mas. How­ev­er, when asked what tra­di­tion he be­lieves has been dis­ap­pear­ing from most fam­i­lies, he said it was the time spent to­geth­er.

“The fam­i­ly’s kin­da not get­ting to­geth­er as they sup­posed to be. We’re try­ing to get the fam­i­ly to­geth­er and that’s very im­por­tant. When the fam­i­ly comes to­geth­er that’s Christ­mas, so keep up the tra­di­tion,” he said.

Toni Bou­caud, 24, from St James, is plan­ning to spend the hol­i­days with her moth­er. They are putting to­geth­er events for their com­mu­ni­ty for Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions filled with ca­ma­raderie and fel­low­ship. How­ev­er, she is not as con­fi­dent about her cook­ing abil­i­ties.

“Well, I can’t make black cake, and yeah, so tra­di­tion­al foods, younger gen­er­a­tions . . . it’s re­al­ly hard to make those kinds of foods. Pastelles, black cake, etc, I could make pastelles but not that well,” she laughed.

A com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor for most is prepar­ing cuisines typ­i­cal for this time of the year. This ap­plies some liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go who still hold on to the unique Christ­mas tra­di­tions from their home­lands.

Es­te­van Mar­quez, who mi­grat­ed to T&T from Tu­cu­pi­ta, Venezuela, shared the tra­di­tions he en­joys dur­ing the sea­son.

“We cel­e­brate our Christ­mas on the 24th at 12 o’clock in the night. Yeah, so, our Christ­mas is not on the 25th. We start from 10 in the night un­til 5 in the morn­ing and sleep all day on the 25th. And our spe­cial dish is some­thing we call hal­la­ca which is made from corn and ham and beef and that’s our tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas food ... and sal­ad, chick­en sal­ad,” he said.

Glo­ria Si­mon, 63, who lives in east Trinidad, was adamant that the tra­di­tions she prac­tices have not changed and even ad­mit­ted that her Christ­mas tree had been put up since Ju­ly.

“I haven’t changed any­thing with my tra­di­tion this year. My moth­er passed away and she was a Christ­mas per­son, so I do all my dec­o­ra­tions. My tree has been up since Ju­ly. And I’m now putting out my lit­tle dec­o­ra­tions be­cause I love to put out dec­o­ra­tions,” she said.