Parang, coal pot and patois in Santa Cruz

Old time Christmas

Neighbour, neighbour, open the door, neighbour!

Is Christmas morning, you should be waking

Put the drinks on the table

I hope your bar able

Me and the boys come to give you a parang

We ent leaving till the liquor done...

It’s Christmas, Merry Christmas!

– It’s Christmas, Baron

DO YOU think you would be able to celebrate Christmas without a stove or television? What about no gifts? Would you be satisfied with good food and music? Over the coming weeks I will share stories of communities that celebrated this time with very little material comforts, but an abundance of family, friends and the spirit of sharing.

We head first to Santa Cruz, the birthplace of my mother and the home of large numbers of my maternal family. In my family, we proudly claim links to our African and Indigenous heritage, Warao especially.

But for many, the “cocoa panyol” (from Español) ancestors from Venezuela are perhaps their greatest source of pride. It is said that some of our forebears left Venezuela around the 1880s, coming across to both our islands by pirogue.

From the 1860s to the early 1900s, the production of cocoa in Santa Cruz and other parts of the country steadily expanded. Unlike sugar, which required vast tracts of land, cocoa could be grown on small plots. This allowed communities to become self-sufficient and independent earners. Out of necessity, everything was either grown or reared at home. From seasoning to sorrel, from pigs and ducks to chickens and wild meat, the village of Santa Cruz was its own complete ecosystem.

As a child, my mother recalls that there was communal cooking. Her family was one of those in the village with a dirt oven, so people would share the oven to cook bread, black cake, pone, sweetbread and other delicacies. Long before “farm to table” was considered a groundbreaking concept, in Santa Cruz, they grew almost everything that they ate.

For pastelles, they grew the corn, hung it up to dry and then at Christmas time grated it for the cornmeal. Fig leaves would be used to wrap them because, well, that was what was available. The string to tie the pastelle was made from the vein of the fig leaf itself.

Sorrel and ginger were planted to make sorrel drink, liqueur and ginger beer. They planted cassava for pone. For black cake, people did not have baking tins, so they would make the cake in the coal pot with “fire on top and fire below.” Pastelles were also cooked on the fireside.

The church was central to Christmas. The season started with Advent, usually three-four weeks before Christmas. This period also signalled the beginning of parang season.

Parang was a ritual, following a specific order and protocol that were strictly observed by both players and community. For instance, on Christmas Eve or in the early hours of Christmas morning, the paranderos would stay outside the house and sing Levanta, asking the people inside to wake up. They would not enter unless the homeowner invited them in. The Serenal or Aguinaldo announced their arrival
en la madruga, in the early morning or at dawn. L’Annunciation recalled when the Angel Gabriel declared to Mary that she would conceive and have a child by virgin birth.

My mother does not have a memory of Christmas trees and lights or even gifts.

But, “I never had a white doll. I made one out of brown fabric with some of my hair that came out when they combed it. So, quite literally, I had a doll that looked like me.”

On Christmas Day, children would play with their siblings, cousins and other children. Neighbours would visit one another or sit in the yard drinking and talking in patois. And, of course, there was always lots of food.

Our nation can learn a great deal from the way Christmas was celebrated in previous times. Sharing resources and being content with what you have are essential. There are also the examples of hard work and growing your own food, particularly important now, especially considering our ridiculous food import bill.

Certainly, these values are more in alignment with what the prophet would expect of us, not only during the festivities, but every day.

So, this Christmas, what change will you make to bring more meaning to your season? Sometimes the answers to the future are held in our past.

Dara E Healy is a performance artist and founder of the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN