Gingerbread males and nativity scenes, Christmas bushes and eggnog, caroling, turkey dinner, and the phrases Behave, Santa’s watching: These items imply Christmas to most. However within the islands of the Caribbean, it goes extra like this: pasteles and Magi, century crops and spiked sorrel, masquerades, Jumbie Desk, and Be good or John Canoe gwanna getchu.
You’ll discover within the Caribbean lots of the similar traditions that characterize the common Christmas sentiment: A spirit of sharing, an overindulgence in good meals and spirits, a gravitation towards household and pals, and a return to spiritual and cultural roots.
With their promise of deliverance from snow and chill, the islands’ definition of a White Christmas has extra to do with sand seashores and a heat welcome to share in vibrant celebrations.
Puerto Rico
The prize for the longest and most fervent Caribbean Christmas season goes to Puerto Rico. Islanders start the day after Thanksgiving and don’t give out till February. The celebration climaxes with the Feast of the Three Kings, or the Epiphany, on January 6, and on San Sebastian Day, January 20.
In outdated Puerto Rico, the household would start in November getting ready vacation dishes for weeks to come back. Making pasteles (pork, raisin, and olive enchiladas wrapped in plantain leaves) required efforts of the whole household. And no household dared be caught with out pasteles.
Each weekend throughout the pre-Christmas season, a disguised band of pals — armed with cuatros (small guitars) and guiros (corrugated gourds).
Bahamas
You may sum up the vacations within the Bahamas with one phrase: Junkanoo.
Haunting rhythms thump softly on goatskin drums. Whistles scream shrilly and shade explodes in a combustion of feathers, sequins, and streamers. Nassau’s large occasion on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, leads the Junkanoo road parade custom. However all through the islands of the Bahamas, it interprets as a cavalcade of costumed pageantry.
As we speak, huge native bands with names like The Valley Boys, Prodigal Sons, and Saxons compete. They costume in vibrant fringes of crepe paper and sequins layered onto fabric, gigantic cardboard, or picket headdresses and shoulder frames. The j’ouvert (opening) get together begins earlier than dawn on Boxing Day and continues in a burst of self-perpetuating vitality.
5. Curacao And Bonaire
As a part of the Dutch ABC islands with Aruba and Bonaire, Curacao shares lots of the similar traditions. Its rum-spiked ponche cream will get a pistachio infusion and December 5 is a red-letter day on the vacation calendar. That’s when Sinterklaas — the Dutch model of Outdated St. Nick wearing an extended white beard, crimson gown, and tall bishop’s miter — arrives in St. Anna Bay on a tugboat. He throws sweet and goodies to children lined up on shore.
Bonaire sticks to outdated traditions with caroling teams just like Puerto Rico and the Fiesta di Bari, named after the standard sheepskin drum that retains the vacation beat. Each musical traditions carry out all through the season at native bars and particular occasions.
6. St. Croix
Within the U.S. Virgin Islands, islanders sip guavaberry rum beneath painted century bushes. Celebrating its seventieth anniversary this yr, at St. Croix’s Christmas competition from December 11–January 7, Spanish guiros accompany American banjos and Caribbean metal drums to supply vacation music uniquely Crucian. Highlights embrace pageants, a carnival village, a meals truthful, a j’ouvert, and children and grownup parades. Quelbe (the official music of the USVI) lyrics sweeten tunes with island taste: “Mama bake your johnny cake, Christmas a’comin’” and “Good mawnin’, good mawnin’, I come fo’ de guavaberry.”
7. Montserrat
Not as famend as a few of the larger islands, however equally steeped in custom and taste, is the Christmas celebration on the tiny isle of Montserrat. Right here, the place masquerades, metal drum bands, and road “jump-up” dancing prevail all through December, the family Jumbie Desk stays the true showcase of vacation heritage.
Jumbie means “ghost” in Caribbean dialect. Montserratians, though strongly Irish-influenced, share the Scandinavian perception that ancestral spirits return at Christmas to hitch in festivities. A Christmas Eve desk is thereby set to share with them, together with conventional specialties and the island’s distinctive white rum ginger wine.
