Ken Ali

It is a sig­nal ho­n­our–the re­sult of a lucky co­in­ci­dence–to have a news­pa­per col­umn ap­pear on Christ­mas Day. If I had a self-serv­ing, pic­turesque mind, I might have con­jured thoughts of peo­ple lap­ping up this piece in the coun­try's favourite news­pa­per short­ly af­ter open­ing their Christ­mas gifts and while sip­ping ei­ther gin­ger beer or sor­rel or cut­ting home-baked fruit­cake. But alas! Long-trea­sured Christ­mas tra­di­tions are fast dy­ing, and, as a re­sult, yule­tide cus­toms and rit­u­als have be­come com­mer­cialised or have been for­got­ten or aban­doned. How many pastelles were bought this year, for ex­am­ple, in­stead of be­ing made with care, fam­i­ly help and a long-held recipe in a fre­net­ic Christ­mas set­ting?

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Mass me­dia have do­ing lit­tle to pro­mote the floun­der­ing folk­lore prac­tices and so­cial sci­en­tists are hard­ly record­ing or in­sti­tu­tion­al­is­ing the tra­di­tions. Sure­ly, there is a key role here for the home-grown Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T. A per­son­al sore point is the vir­tu­al sidelin­ing of lyri­cal, well-ren­dered and mu­si­cal­ly rich sea­son­al an­thems in favour of an in­dige­nous ex­pres­sion that is es­sen­tial­ly ba­nal and that li­onis­es wan­ton lifestyles and es­pe­cial­ly rav­en­ous­ness and al­co­hol binges. These "songs" are her­ald­ed as "Christ­mas hits," a de­pic­tion that's a gross in­sult to Nat "King" Cole, Bing Cros­by and oth­er time­less singing gi­ants, in­clud­ing our own Spar­row, an out­stand­ing, and maybe un­der-ap­pre­ci­at­ed, bal­ladeer.

Our van­ish­ing trea­sured Christ­mas con­ven­tions are made even more dis­turb­ing by ram­pant de­clin­ing lo­cal stan­dards and the com­fort­able ease with which they are lapped up by an in­dif­fer­ent so­ci­ety. It was in­evitable that, in our fast-paced land, peo­ple would find less time for a well-cul­tured ponche de cr�me, but, dammit, what ex­plains the dis­gust­ing pa­rade of emp­ty new ren­di­tions that her­ald ac­tiv­i­ties sharply counter to the val­ues of Christ­mas? Christ­mas Day is not the time to protest our fal­ter­ing na­tion­al touch­stones, but I'm con­fi­dent you share my angst even as you sam­ple the sweet­bread you hur­ried­ly bought and you are forced to lis­ten to rum-pro­claim­ing songs be­ing blared on less­er ra­dio sta­tions.

With re­spect to the lat­ter, how could a coun­try so blessed with mu­si­cal tal­ent now dis­tort and mu­ti­late tra­di­tion­al parang, with its throb­bing cu­a­tro, bass box, man­dolin and chac-chac? There is a rear­guard ef­fort to pre­serve the art, how­ev­er, and con­ven­tion­al parang groups and their um­brel­la body must be ac­knowl­edged. And what has be­come of the time-ho­n­oured car­olling tra­di­tion, a prac­tice that unit­ed com­mu­ni­ties, pro­claimed the core mu­sic of the sea­son and high­light­ed some out­stand­ing–and the odd, ill-fit­ting–voic­es? It could be ar­gued that car­olling has been un­done by preva­lent crime and the rel­a­tive cold­ness of im­port­ed neigh­bour­hoods with­out deep com­mu­ni­ty roots.

More and more, house-to-house cul­tur­al greet­ings are now for Hal­loween, which is as un-Trinida­di­an as, well, Thanks­giv­ing turkey.

On the mat­ter of crime, this wretched bane has af­fect­ed Christ­mases of lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of na­tion­als this decade alone, so much that the es­sen­tial mes­sage of the sea­son has be­come a hard sell to cyn­i­cal and tor­tured rel­a­tives. Cir­cum­stances are wors­ened by a seem­ing in­dif­fer­ence from the au­thor­i­ties and in­abil­i­ty to dent the killing spree in a land of less than 2,000 square miles. Yet, we have the an­nu­al spec­tre of our lead­ers is­su­ing vac­u­ous Christ­mas "mes­sages," de­void of rel­e­vant sub­stance and wor­thy on­ly in con­firm­ing their re­spec­tive self-im­por­tance in so­ci­ety.

Why do we re­peat­ed­ly have to be lec­tured about prop­er liv­ing by men and women who are fail­ing in their re­spec­tive jobs of im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of our lives??On this Christ­mas Day, pon­der, too, on the num­ber of miss­ing Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans, peo­ple van­ish­ing from the love of their fam­i­ly, who turn var­i­ous­ly con­fused and an­guished, un­able to de­ter­mine whether to seek clo­sure. Nathi­fa Mitchell, the in­de­fati­ga­ble cam­paign­er on be­half of miss­ing peo­ple, has re­mind­ed us of Leah Lam­my, who has been miss­ing for ten months. There are sev­er­al oth­ers, of course, a few dis­ap­pear­ing for more than a year. Note Naail Ali, who went miss­ing for what must feel like eons, with his moth­er each day star­ing va­cant­ly out of their fam­i­ly home, con­fi­dent­ly ex­pect­ing he would run up and hug dear mum­my.

Re­call Denise Bar­cant, who is al­so not with her fam­i­ly on this spe­cial day. What's re­al­ly be­hind this scourge of miss­ing peo­ple? Is it the re­place­ment fam­i­ly tor­ture for kid­nap­pings, which, ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, fell by 58 per cent this year? Then, there is grow­ing re­al­i­ty that, for some, Christ­mas is a nec­es­sary nui­sance on the way to Car­ni­val, the solemn cel­e­bra­tion of the birth of Christ be­ing cru­el­ly edged by the an­gry noise of the pa­gan fes­ti­val. To­mor­row, Box­ing Day, is a tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas lagniappe, usu­al­ly set aside for en­ter­tain­ing at home or dri­ving out to rel­a­tives, in­clud­ing long-ne­glect­ed in-laws. It was in­tro­duced gen­er­a­tions ago to dis­trib­ute boxed gifts to house­hold trades­men and to give char­i­ty.

Brazen re­tail­ers dared, a few years ago, to fol­low the Amer­i­can way of in­tro­duc­ing bar­gain sales, and, much to my dis­dain, I've seen this sil­ly con­cept mush­room in a thriv­ing busi­ness day to of­fload held-over Christ­mas stuff. Worse is that now Box­ing Day is the un­of­fi­cial kick-off for Car­ni­val, the fete-mon­gers un­able to wait un­til San­ta re­turns to his North Pole base or un­til the lav­ish Christ­mas din­ner prop­er­ly di­gests. Melo­di­ous Christ­mas bal­lads would be dumped with­in hours in favour of inane par­ty-hop­ping clat­ter, which were sup­pos­ed­ly well craft­ed over the course of an en­tire year. Sure­ly, we are sac­ri­fic­ing the es­sen­tial Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian Christ­mas, a sin­gu­lar pe­ri­od of fel­low­ship and friend­ship, cel­e­bra­tion and cus­toms.

If we are to lose our tra­di­tions–some dat­ing back to the home­lands of our an­ces­tors–the least we should do is to prop­er­ly doc­u­ment them, for the gen­er­a­tions that would nev­er en­joy dirt oven-baked bread, fruit­cakes that are the re­sult of a month's prepa­ra­tion and zip­py home­made lo­cal drinks. They rep­re­sent the rich fruits of one of the most di­verse places in the world, boun­ti­ful with our cui­sine and cul­ture, with a pas­sion for peo­ple and a love for life. In all of this, it's just left for me to wish you a blessed and tru­ly hap­py Christ­mas. Even if you en­joy it on­ly with canned good­ies from the food store!

Ken Ali co-hosts the pop­u­lar week­day dis­cus­sion show on 106.1 FM, from 6 am to 9 am