Merry Christmas

By the time most Trinidadians and Tobagonians begin reading our Christmas Day edition they will probably have opened their gifts and looking forward to start on the traditional Xmas breakfast of ham, topped off with chow chow and pickled onions; garlic pork, fried eggs, home-made bread, sweetbread, cake, fruits, ginger beer and sorrel. The children will most likely be enjoying the toys that Santa Claus brought them for Christmas, and those who were luckier than others, surprised that he was still smart enough to know what they wanted and had noted carefully on their several lists.

Many families would have gone to church last night and their gifts opened shortly after midnight on their return home. While Christmas, it is said, is mainly for children, yet many of the not so young get over this hurdle by convincing themselves that it is also for the young at heart. Unfortunately, in many homes across the country today, Christian and non-Christian alike, there are children, teenagers and adults who will have little or almost nothing to eat, and certainly nothing special, and for whom the day, apart from Christmas carols from nearby radios and television sets and an induced feeling, will be not unlike any other day in the calendar. For them there will be the reality of “last year’s broken toys.” Some will eat food scrambled from garbage dumps.

We ask you to spare a thought this Christmas Day, for example, for the families of kidnapped persons, for instance those of Marc Prescott and Vijay Persad; families who lost a son, daughter, mother or father or brother or sister, victims of the senseless bloodletting or of vehicular accidents that perhaps could have been avoided if only there had been effective Police mobile patrols. We ask you, if it is possible, maybe to take some of that sorrel and ginger beer, ham, garlic pork, roast beef, cake and sweetbread, and turkey and macaroni pie the family prepared or had catered, along with some toys and balloons and apples and grapes and bananas for the youngsters, as well as practical gifts, across to a needy family you know. And with the gesture put smiles on their faces and Christ back into Christmas.While there is tremendous fun in receiving, there is a lot of it to be had merely in the act of giving and this without being one bit mushy.

This year’s Christmas season has been blurred somewhat by the short period between it and Carnival 2005. Many Trinidadians and Tobagonians must have found it difficult at times to decide which was being marketed, Christmas or Carnival, what with calypsos jostling for air space with carols. Preparation for Carnival and the publicising of pre-Carnival fetes, the first scheduled for as early as Boxing Day, added to the confusion. The Carnival booths in the Queen’s Park Savannah are almost up and work has begun on preparation of the North Stand. In the blink of an eye, carols will give way to calypsos. Meanwhile, the Editorial, Advertising, Accounting, Printing and Circulation members of the Newsday family wish all of our readers, advertisers and vendors and indeed all citizens of Trinidad and Tobago and the entire Caribbean Community of Nations a safe and Merry Christmas 2005.