An affront to good taste

It’s the week before Christmas and if I said I was in the Christmas spirit I’d be lying. Like any true Trini I already feel the Carnival blood stirring in my veins. Soca CDs have been helping me get through depressing train rides to and from work where everyone looks like he’s about to jump onto the tracks and bring an end to an existence too miserable to continue. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me come February 27th when I wake up and have to put on my leggings and trousers, undershirt, vest and cardigan and head off to work bundled up in an overcoat while Port-of-Spain will be choked with women shimmering and shaking in their two piece and fries, except for me. It happens every year, the build up of anticipation to say farewell to the flesh but not before the sublime pleasure of Christmas. I’m not one of those that jump past December and go straight into February’s pleasures, which is the way things have been going for the past five to six years give or take a year or two.

I love every aspect of the season — the racking of the brains to find the perfect gift for family and friends, the Santa Claus hat perched saucily on the head the week leading up to the big day, the purchase of the groceries, my mother pestering me to “pass a little paint in the kitchen,” usually left until Christmas Eve night despite her dislike for last minute work, all these are necessary to the celebration. And everywhere, regardless of religion or cultural background, there’s no denying the palpable feeling that this is a special time, a period different from the normal hustle of day to day survival. Even if the day doesn’t bring you closer to God in celebration of his birth, then certainly something in you feels the need to call friends and lime, to visit relatives and be with those you have special feelings for. Up here in jolly old England everyone trip over themselves in their eagerness to be politically correct.

So Christmas appears to be on the cusp of being reduced to just another bank holiday, as the meagre public holidays are thus called. References to Jesus, God, or anything remotely religious are regarded as being insensitive to the non-Christian sectors of society. The argument is that London is a cosmopolitan city and so, apparently, the only way to make everyone feel included is to disregard the things that make us different, not realising that to deny cultural differences is to eradicate the very things that make a place cosmopolitan in the first place. There are, of course, a few stalwarts that refuse to go down without a fight. A handful of houses take advantage of the extra hours of darkness and light up their neighbourhoods like a red light district in Bangkok. Huge creches flash and wink next to terribly garish Santa Clauses and reindeer with voluminous red noses. Seeing these bastions of cosquelitude remind me of the house in Trincity just off the bus route that every year, without fail, manages to produce the most colourful, the most gaudy, the brightest, Christmas decorations to be seen past the Bhagwansingh mansion, that will only to be topped by their presentation for the next year.

The last couple mornings BBC channel 1 has had a lively debate running on its morning programme regarding these houses. Interior decorators, architects and designers have all come out against them. It’s a waste of electricity they cry, a bloody nuisance and an affront to good taste. One fashion editor thought he’d delivered a coup de grace by saying he was spending Christmas in the Caribbean enjoying the sun and sand, away from such lack of good taste. I laughed out loud; if he thought he was escaping bad taste by going to the Caribbean he was certainly mistaken. Some of us have turned bad taste into a discipline. Even the carols don’t sound the same up here. Listening to Jim Reeves and Nat King Cole while drinking coffee in Starbuck’s last weekend was downright depressing, despite having come in from the cold after a day spent shopping.

What always managed to sound emotive and sentimental in the past now seemed manic depressive. One friend wondered if the DJs back home speed up the tracks to make them sound more lively. Another one almost started to cry, driving us back out to the cold again in search of a beer and good cheer. Now don’t get me wrong, the plan is not to sound like one of those who blast and bemoan any and everything about the country they’ve chosen to emigrate to of their own free will. But there is something to be said for political insensitivity. There is merit in putting form before fashion, as the saying (I think) goes. So sometime this week I’m going to sneak out to a party shop and buy the biggest, most awful red and green balloons to decorate my flat. And maybe even a Santa Claus hat. Comments? Please write suszanna@hotmail.com