Ver­non Khelawan

Is Christ­mas los­ing its sig­nif­i­cance? This is a ques­tion which has been asked many times in the last two decades. It would seem the ju­ry is still out on that. In most of the Unit­ed States, Christ­mas has been re­placed by the word hol­i­day. It is no longer Mer­ry Christ­mas, but rather hap­py hol­i­days. Ab­surd as it might be, it's the re­al­i­ty, so now peo­ple in that coun­try do not cel­e­brate the birth of Christ, but in­cred­u­lous­ly just an­oth­er hol­i­day.

As young­sters grow­ing up in years past we had lit­tle choice but to sing along with Bing Cros­by and his White Christ­mas, or Nat Cole's Christ­mas Song. We were weaned on the tra­di­tion­al car­ols and they had an im­por­tant role to play lead­ing up to De­cem­ber 25.

To­day, lit­tle is heard about Bing or Nat. We have Kel­wyn Hutcheon, Mar­i­lyn Williams and oth­ers do­ing the bal­lads. Au­then­tic parang has been re­placed by par­ran­deros who per­form ei­ther in com­pe­ti­tion or for a fee. Gone are the days when the vil­lage el­ders would move from house to house in the neigh­bour­hood and some­times be­yond, to share the good news of Je­sus' birth in song with fam­i­ly and friends while par­tak­ing, with a re­li­gious dis­ci­pline, the food and drink of­fered.

The mu­sic genre which now per­vades the sea­son has been bap­tised "so­ca parang," a hy­brid of so­ca mu­sic sea­soned with the parang beat. But all is not lost, we still get a sprin­kling of the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas car­ols and au­then­tic parang songs. It leaves us to won­der there­fore, whether Singing Francine read the Christ­mas tea leaves which prompt­ed her chart top­per Christ Is The Rea­son For The Sea­son.

While some of these lo­cal com­po­si­tions do touch on the sea­son's rea­son, a large per­cent­age of them range from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous, but they all get air­play and have gained over time,

ac­cep­tance as lo­cal Christ­mas mu­sic.

These changes have re­sult­ed in se­vere chal­lenges for those who would cel­e­brate in a more peace­ful way, pre­fer­ring to lis­ten and en­joy the songs that re­late to the birth of Christ, in­clud­ing the orig­i­nal parang songs, which bring a cer­tain kind of joy and peace.

Spe­cial foods, which were at one time unique to the lo­cal Christ­mas cui­sine-the re­al pastelle, home-made bread and sweet bread, baked in a dirt oven most times in the neigh­bour's yard, ham boiled in a tin, and that too in the back­yard, re­al gin­ger beer from the gin­ger tu­ber and sor­rel from dried sor­rel flower-all lo­cal.

To­day the fran­chis­es have tak­en over and the cui­sine has be­come adap­ta­tions of Amer­i­can style cook­ing, while cater­ers con­tin­ue to be­lit­tle that del­i­ca­cy called pastelle. Sud­den­ly we have chick­en, beef, pork or fish pastelles and ridicu­lous­ly so, even a veg­e­tar­i­an pastelle. Venezue­lans have al­ways re­gard­ed their del­i­ca­cy as a mix­ture of prop­er­ly sea­soned minced beef and pork stuffed in­to a corn­meal mix­ture, wrapped in ba­nana leaves and then boiled. Now alu­mini­um foil has re­placed the ba­nana leaves. So much for flavour.

In spite of all of these chal­lenges, Christ­mas in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to hold its own and there are still many homes which serve the re­al pastelle, home-made bread and sweet bread and where fam­i­lies en­joy the re­al sor­rel and the gin­ger beer that re­al­ly burns as it goes down the throat.

Such cel­e­bra­tions are aid­ed and abet­ted by the joy­ful Christ­mas ser­vices as the tra­di­tion­al mid­night mass bids to make a come­back and fam­i­lies pray to­geth­er and al­low peace and joy to reign in their homes and in their hearts dur­ing the sea­son.

To my read­ers, Mer­ry Christ­mas and God's choic­est bless­ings in the com­ing year and to our na­tion, a year of peace and har­mo­ny.

Ver­non Khelawan is the me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain with of­fices at 31 In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain. Tele­phone: 623-7620.