IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE AGAIN

It is that time of the year once again, Christmas Eve, and in scores of homes across Trinidad and Tobago families have already made the traditional sorrel and ginger beer and are preparing to bake their ham and turkey and macaroni pie. The Christmas cake and sweetbread would have been completed by yesterday. The ham will be baked in gas or electric ovens, with the old custom in so many homes of yesteryear of boiling the ham in cooking oil tins, now seeming light years away. The more daring among the younger children will seek to have a sneak preview of the cake and ham and sorrel and ginger beer, while their mothers and older siblings are otherwise engaged.   Old curtains will come down and new fancy ones go up today. In some homes cushion covers will be changed and those that will be put on today taken off immediately after New Year’s, as with the case of curtains, only to be dusted off and used again come Christmas Eve 2005.

Balloons will be blown up this evening and the several gifts will be carefully placed by in house Santas around the base of brightly lit Christmas trees, as carols, local and foreign come off  CD players, portable discmans and tape recorders.  As usual it will be as much fun for the parents as it is for the children.  Several parents may even recall to their children how Christmas Eve was in their day, what with groups of carollers going from house to house singing such old time favourites as “White Christmas,” “Silent Night” and “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” Or of Pat Castagne’s evergreen “Kiss Me for Christmas” sung not by the carollers but played on Radio Trinidad.  For Christmas, as always, is a Land of Return.

The nicely wrapped Christmas gifts will come mostly as a surprise to many, children and parents alike, but in some homes, however, toys and gifts for the kids would have been pre-selected by the children themselves, a custom in some families which dates as far back as the 1940s. There will be last minute shopping and the fun that can come with it, as many Trinidadians and Tobagonians still appear to enjoy the hustle and bustle whether it is in downtown Port-of-Spain, Scarborough, San Fernando, Chaguanas, Point Fortin, Arima or Tunapuna.  Some who may have overlooked certain items will head for the city or town centre, while there are those who insist on buying their apples, grapes and pears on Christmas so they will be fresh for the holidays, at least freshly stored in their refrigerators. Yet others will go merely for the lime.

Office parties will wind up today, come lunchtime, and many offices if they are not already closed for the holidays to reopen on Tuesday and yet others on January 3 will shut up shop earlier than usual to allow staff the opportunity to begin and finish early whatever chores there are for them at home. This Christmas Eve as other Christmas Eves over the years family heads will discover the proverbial “thousand and one things” to be completed and in place before the big day comes. Some will be seemingly stressed out, but it will all have been in the spirit of the season, and come the 2005 Christmas season the fun will start all over again. Perhaps we will be the first ever to do it, but we wish our readers  a fun-filled Christmas Eve, and for the lucky a sneak preview of all that lovely sorrel and ginger beer, baked ham and turkey.