What is Christmas and why the great hype and anticipation year after year? Is Christmas mainly geared to the children in our lives or us as adults. Is it time we are glad to get off work to have a cheeky drink, let’s discuss.
As a child growing up in the small Island of Montserrat, Christmas was the time to let loose to get all the gifts you saw all year around, depending on your budget of course. Negotiating skills would come to full effect trying to squeeze every cent we can out of our parents and my experience was a bit different. My birthday is on the 1st of January so I’m negotiating for a twofer trying to satisfy both holidays. The 23rd is here, the crew, my cousins and siblings make plans to run the town red (as children of course) the following night. Plans are set, the Christmas music is blasting, the movies are on and popcorn is being consumed at a very high rate. The festive season is in full effect and we are feeling goo
The warm weather is a far contrast to Christmas when I lived in the United States or in England.. No expectancy of snow but Santa Clause is always more or less in the forefront of the season. Christmas eve has arrived and it’s about 6.30, 7 pm and we start gathering one by one, everyone trickling into our yearly meeting spot in the capital called plymouth. The name is called Evergreen or Roundabout, the area where we get together. In a lot of the Caribbean Islands it is called a Savannah. At any given time that’s where the action is. If my memory serves me well there would be a guy singing or playing steel pan or something entertaining. To me back then it was a grand ole time but maybe not so much now.
We are all gathered here today now one and all, our little pockets full of cash and all the toys to be had. The stores didn’t know what was about to hit them. Like a swarm of locusts going from one plant to another we touched down in every toy or clothing store. Remote control cars and trucks were my toys of choice. At the end of the night we were too tired to even open the boxes.The traditional style of putting gifts under the christmas tree was never our thing. We did a secret santa from time to time with our extended church family and potlocks with a ridiculous amount of food to eat and even leftovers. I never remembered our parents, aunts or uncles receiving gifts from us. Now as an adult with my own children I instill sharing and always giving without expecting anything in return. For the past two years we’ve been here my boys have blessed their teachers and classmates with gifts.(sidenote Absolutely love that school). As for me, I’m not the best gift receiver but I will always appreciate the effort and thoughtfulness of someone’s efforts to have me in mind. On that final note I hope everyone had a very happy holiday season full of love and togetherness with family.
