Ryan Ba­choo

This Sat­ur­day, Christ­mas in Ju­ly re­turns to the Green Mar­ket San­ta Cruz (GM­SC). The GM­SC founder said, “We strive to cre­ate a true Tri­ni Christ­mas vibe with foods and drinks that Tri­nis love to cel­e­brate the fes­tive sea­son like sor­rel, gin­ger beer, pastelles, black cake and the fa­vorite “piece ah pork."

This year there are two com­pe­ti­tions open to the gen­er­al pub­lic: The Ponche de Crème Com­pe­ti­tion spon­sored by Nes­tle/Mag­gie and the tra­di­tion­al pastelle com­pe­ti­tion spon­sored by Mal­abar Farms. Natasha De­bourg, Damion Wil­son will be judg­ing whose Ponche de Crème rates best while David Wears and Ja­son Pe­ru will de­cide on the pastelles reach­ing for per­fec­tion. Ham­pers worth over $500 will go to the win­ners in ad­di­tion to cash prizes.

Dig­i­cel will be the plat­inum mu­sic spon­sor for the day bring­ing the won­der­ful Mar­cia Mi­ran­da and So­lo Para T, a tal­ent­ed parang side and Max the DJ with a spe­cial se­lec­tion of Christ­mas car­ols and so­ca parang.

San­ta will be vis­it­ing from 10-12 with a bag of sur­pris­es for chil­dren un­der 12 cour­tesy OCHO Or­gan­ic choco­lates and Peake’s Home store.

“We are al­ways thrilled by this oc­ca­sion dur­ing JA­VA when so many Tri­nis liv­ing abroad and their friends come home to vis­it. We are pick­ing up this year on one of the his­tor­i­cal rea­sons for Xmas in Ju­ly, which was to re­mind peo­ple to buy presents to be shipped to loved ones far away at a time be­fore Ama­zon, when it could take months for pack­ages to be de­liv­ered.”

In this spir­it, the Green Mar­ket will be col­lect­ing do­na­tions and gifts for Ni­na, an out­stand­ing ini­tia­tive pro­vid­ing tran­si­tion­al hous­ing and guid­ance for young women when they have to leave chil­dren’s’ homes.