Christmas traditions

Every Christmas I wake up before dawn, stuff the turkey with olives, garlic and bread crumbs soaked in chicken sauce, pop it in the oven and head for my 6 am swim. I do this without much of a thought, but this Christmas, I realised an important connection to my past.

About 50 years ago, my father gave me and my brothers ice skates for Christmas. Then he took us deep into the woods to show us some remote ponds we could ice-skate on. After that, ice skating became part of my Christmas tradition.

Early in the morning, I’d trek through the snow with my skates and a broom to brush the snow from the pond, and I’d skate until my cheeks turned numb. Swimming has replaced that tradition, and it reminds me of Christmases when I was a child.

I have passed down some of my Christmas traditions to my children even though they live in a tropical country with traditions very different from my own. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, my mother always baked Christmas cookies.

Her Christmases were defined by sugar cookies. In Trinidad, I baked gingerbread cookies for my children. Ijanaya, my daughter, now bakes sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies in the weeks leading up to Christmas. She proudly says this is part of her Christmas tradition. I gave her my mother’s sugar cookie recipe, and my own gingerbread cookie recipe. She guards them like the Hope Diamond and the secret Coca-Cola formula.

When you think about it, Christmases, past and present, are like those Christmas lights we string around the Christmas tree.

They wind through our lives, lighting up those simple moments that define Christmas and create a sense of family traditions that are so important.

Because of Christmas tradition we have parang, ponche a cr?me and ham; freshly painted homes and Christmas presents. Christmas traditions stretch back in time to our Spanish roots.

Traditions are important because they provide a sense of personal and cultural history. We blend our family traditions with those cultural traditions of the place where we live and together, these traditions give us a sense of self.

We are all products of our culture and we carry that identity to other cultures.

Our children will carry those traditions to the places they will live, and they will blend them some day with the new experiences they discover, and the experiences that they share with their husbands or wives. This is what makes holidays like Christmas so special and so important.

This Christmas, I wish everyone would pause and take a few moments to think about the importance of history and traditions in our lives. I hope that everyone will think back to the best Christmas memories and realise the pleasure those traditions have brought to our lives. I hope they will consider ways to preserve the traditions and history that define us all year round – not just at Christmas or Carnival, which is around the corner.

On Christmas, everything seems to slow down so that we can savour the memory of the best moments of our lives.

We can remember those family members who are no longer with us, and the family members far in the future we will never know, and we will realise that we can touch the lives of those we will never know because they will experience some of the traditions we have passed on.

M e r r y Christmas, dear readers.

Here’s a toast to you.