Christ Mas in San Cristobel
On this Eve of Carnival Christ mas,
Old Ras Lazarus
glides the street
by Basseterre’s bumpin bus terminal,
guided by his gnarled anointed staff.
The bay bathed in stars
answers the coloured houselites
of crumbling Irishtown shirts and skirts,
whose hurricane-crazy tilted galleries,
and gingerbread puzzles
frame this Caribbean
which can be as angry as Herod,
spiteful as a scorpion
or sensual
as Ezuli Danto,
whisperin through the trees;
seductive as water sisters
Ochun and Simbi,
singing river siren songs;
glorious as El Tucuche
rising out the rainforest,
pointed into a blue sky
you could swim in.
Loping the long Malecon
which loops this bay
by night retracing footsteps,
heading toward the Cathedral of
Immaculate Conception.
An open door on
the Malecon
beckons:
sliver of bar
pricked by a faint string
of blinking coloured lites.
Burning Spear preempts carols,
lessons or liturgy.
Down here in Babylon.
A Dominican dive
in their own Irishtown barrio.
Spear gives way to Anthony Santos’
sweet songs of bitterness
as bachata syncopates out the bar
across the Malecon
slips into the bay’s nite waters
where fishing boats bob
in and out of time.
Cathedral where I studied
the stations of the cross roads.
Here all the santos,
archangels, prophets,
Isiah, Emmanuel and Nathan
rub shoulders,
rustling in the sleeping
hibiscus groves,
with Legba, Damabala Wedo, Azaka
Baron Samdi, the guede and Los Tres Reyos .
From the altar
of Immaculate Conception
on Independence Square,
where slaves were sold no doubt,
is only a corner away from
the jouvert of Christ mas
in St Cristopher
where travelers rest and revive.
If this is the nite
of Christ’s birth
some light
pulses in the jouvert delivery
riddums rising to accompany
herald angels
Potential Bar & Snackette
Cayon Street, Basseterre
fete buss buh we jammin
hooked, limed and sunk by Small Axe’s
Road marchin party mixriddums
On this bright St Christopher
Christ mas morning,
sky stamped blue,
on the flat water of the bay
Hard breeze blusters Basseterre,
Flecks waves’ chevrons
all the way to horizon Nevis.
Big drum breaks the easy torpor
Just before noon, recalling me
From sleep I won’t see
Till jouvert all jumped out.
And so it’s Christmas, or pretty nearly — it’s just a few licks of paint away, right there over the Rio Manzanares, up on top of the pine ridge, which surveys the busy bachacs toting their own decorations below on the streaming corridors. My little daughter is telling me we need snowflakes for the tree we don’t yet have; her mother suggests a snowman but I’m nor sure where to put him.
There’s no room in the fridge and there’s no freezer. No room at the inn and we have to go shopping for dolls which won’t last the day, while under stars tonight we’ll be looking for the North Pole, right here suspended close to the equator, where Santa will need all the airconditioning he can beg along with his cookies and milk, to stop his beard dripping off his face.
It’s easy to get lost in this Trini Christmas, which has long joined the ranks of imported commodity, custom and consumerism, where parang and crèche songs will be drowned in Sinatra or Bing. But we’re developing and we can measure our progress in Halloween and Yuletide and who can now mount the biggest display of lights and sleighs and reindeers carrying that fat Yohoho man to burn allcomers’ eyes and make the neighbours glow with envy.
As an antidote to all this I remember Christ Mas in St Kitts, because if Carnival begins in Trinidad on Boxing Day, the St Kitts Christmas Sports—which predate our own fiesta by at least 150 years—begin with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and run till New Year, merging Amerindian, European and African festival traditions, in an old Creole celebration which expresses the joyfulness of both the Christ child’s birth and a jouvert, before-harvest renewal of the life cycle.
It’s possible to leave mass in the cathedral in Independence Square at midnight and jump straight into the Christ mas of a jouvert mas band circling Basseterre in the darkness, and then through the dawn, until by high noon crowds converge on the Circus. Wild Indians throw their tomahawks to the skies, while Big Drum bands playing Afro-rhythms on the appropriated instruments of British military bands (bass drum, snare and fife) stir Hunter and Bull traditional masqueraders, whipcracks bouncing off the flagstones of Basseterre, and Small Axe soca bridges the centuries blaring to seasonal winers who’ll need a siesta before their Christmas dinner. Whichever way you make it, Happy Christmas.