Seize the day

He further went on to state that Trinidad and Tobago was a land where prejudices, marginalisation and discrimination have never been tolerated — thus revealing that he obviously has never heard about the Club Coconuts "Golliwog, Dhal and Members only night" scandal of a few years ago. The granting of this celebration would be in keeping with the fact that this country is, according to him, the only one to celebrate the uniqueness of all its ethnic groups.

This comment, I am sure, was made only after extensive research; especially into how exactly a country celebrates the distinctiveness that defines each ethnicity that calls it home. In true Trini spirit, I argue that this commemoration takes the form of all other previous attempts at celebrating our differing races, cultures and religions, namely by the granting of a national holiday.

I am sure this suggestion will garner great support — our Trini love of days off from work is legendary. If that is the case and we get a National Chinese People Reach Day, the new holiday will be the arbiter of many grand things to come, namely, a lot more national holidays. For if the Chinese have their own holiday — may I suggest October 10th, the closest thing we have to an existing Asian celebration and we’ll get discounts on Chinese preserves at Excellent City Centre — then so too must every other ethnic group in the country.

So expect a Syrian National Holiday, which would certainly send Jennifer Baptiste Primus into a paroxysm of fury, but if the Chinese have struggled for 200 years to dominate the local world of restaurants, laundries and radio stations that boast a greater variety of accents than the United Nations, how much more deserving are the Syrians for their unceasing efforts to own Port-of- Spain and every car dealership on the island? Maybe we can make Labour Day their holiday and give the trade unions another one. Maybe the trade unions can tie in their celebrations with Carnival Tuesday, since celebrating both occasions requires that you walk until you know the precise location of every bone in your foot.

Then certainly we must have a Spanish National Holiday. Some may argue that Christmas Day may be seen as being this already, what with all the parang one hears and the number of panyols that descend on your house Christmas Eve with cuatro and belly in hand. But no. Everybody and their mother now celebrate Christmas; colourful fairy lights are put up for Divali and left up until December 25th; are left up, in fact until they disintegrate or refuse to light due to abuse.

The Portuguese, for the sake of equality, must have their own day of celebration and thus allow members of the public to engage in a mad rush to purchase their food (what, by the way, is a typical Trinidad Portuguese meal?) and then sleep for the rest of the day. The Amerindians, poor souls, don’t exist in numbers large enough to entitle them to their own national holiday but perhaps they could get a half day off. Their half day shouldn’t be anywhere near the Spanish day of celebration though, seeing how it was the Spanish that destroyed them in the first place. That would be extreme callousness.

And what about mixed people? "We is folks too," as the saying goes. Now there are all types of mixes in this country — dougla, mulatto, chindian, reds, brownings — but it might be a bit much to give a day to each mix, not to mention it would be damn confusing because people like me who aren’t too sure what exactly we are mixed with wouldn’t know what outfit to buy to commemorate ourselves. So I suggest we just play it safe and have one day for all of us and call it Callaloo Day. And that should give you an idea as to what we’ll be eating on that day too.

So there you have it. Five and a half new National Holidays. Add them to the existing fourteen, not including Carnival Monday and Tuesday, and we have a grand total of nineteen and a half days we don’t go to work but, instead, go to the beach, party the night before until the wee hours, eat copious amounts of food we eat normally anyway, get drunk, drive drunk or sleep all day and wake up in time for the 7 o’ clock news to hear who crashed and died or drowned which is how most of us observe our unique ethnic make up anyway. And the good news is, with the number of foreign doctors being brought in from Cuba and the Philippines by the Ministry of Health, we have at least two more groups of people who may be "quietly struggling" to get their own celebration too.

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