CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION TRADITIONS IN TRINIDAD AND NORWAY |
How Christmas is celebrated in TrinidadChristmas in Trinidad! What an experience for both nationals and non-nationals! Christmas on Trinidad is a season which begins by the end of October and lasts until January the t of the New Year.Formerly, the season was the time of traditional carols and Christmas songs. Nowadays, however, it begins with a spicy, Spanish beat and songs called "parang." This art form is sung by ‘paranderos' who strum their box-guitars, play the cuatro, shake their chac-chacs and spoon in accompaniment. Then as the season progresses soca-parang, which is indigenous to this country, joins the air-waves and parties. At this time of the year almost every family engages in the thorough cleaning of their homes and shopping of gifts and house hold items. They dust, scrub, clean, polish, paint and dress up their houses for Christmas Day. On that day, Trinidadians and Tobagonians engage in enjoying each other's company over a traditional Christmas meal. This includes: ham, turkey, pastelles, baked chicken, stuffing and other delicacies. Then for dessert they enjoy the traditional fruit or black cake which is made with the usual cake ingredients in addition to a mixture of raisins, nuts, cherries, currants, prunes and mixed peel, all soaked in rum and wine. Most of the people go to church on Chrismas Day. Here they experience the real meaning of Christmas, which is about the birth of Jesus Christ. Then they journey to their homes to partake in the exchange of gifts with family and friends. Christmas in Trinidad is a period when all of the problems are put on hold and people go to parties and social gatherings. It is a time of "goodwill to all men", inner peace and happiness. There is no Christmas on earth like a Trinidadian Christmas ! Written by LaToya M. Caracciolo
Yet the differences are less now than just a few
years ego. Improved communications and
increased intercourse between countries have led
to an intermingling of traditions. And to a foreign
guest the similarities between Christmas in Oslo
and in London or New York may appear more
conspicuous than the differences.
There is the same hectic Christmas shopping spree,
the big, lighted Christmas trees in the squares,
streets decorated with garlands and lights, fanciful
window displays with starry-eyed youngsters
craning their necks toget a better view.
And, as in any city, the adult dream about the
good, old-fashioned Christmas the way
grandmother used to celebrate it. But in Norway
this is a dream that may come true - for those who
are lucky enough to be invited to a real country
Christmas.
Christmas in the country
In big country kitchens in farms and villages off the
beaten track the hectic preparations still begin
weeks before the festival season. The special
Christmas beer, «Juleøl", is brewed; (‘jul' means
Christmas) the many traditional pork dishes are
prepared; numerous kinds of small cakes
(biscuits,cookies), the minimum being seven
different kinds, are baked together with the
"julekake", the sweet Christmas bread filled with
raisins, candied peel and cardamom. The smell of
Christmas fills the house, bringing the children's
expectations up to fever pitch.
And then there is the traditional thorough
housecleaning as the Holiday approaches, and the
chopping of enough wood to keep the fires burning
for at least the first three days of Christmas.
Nowadays there is, in addition, a trip to the woods
to select a Christmas tree, a trip that grandfather
probably did not make. For the Christmas tree
was not introduced into Norway from Germany
until the latter half of the nineteenth century; to the
country districts it came even later.
Then, finally, when Christmas Eve arrives, there is
the decorating of the tree, usually done by the
parents behind the closed doors of the living room,
while the children are ready to burst with
excitement outside. It is also usual on Christmas
Eve to make a trip to the barn with a bowl of
porridge for the "nisse", the gnome who -
according to superstition - is the protector of the
farm. Nowadays this ceremony is performed for
the benefit of the children, but grandmother may
possibly have had an uneasy feeling that the little
fellow might actually exist. But he is not the only
one to be given a treat; the "julenek", a sheaf of
oats for the birds, is mounted on a pole, and the
farm animals get a special Christmas feed.
And then, on Christmas Eve in the afternoon, the
church bells start chiming to ring in the Holiday.
For this occasion, as for other great feasts, they
are not rung in the ordinary way: there is no lazy
ding-dong, instead there is an intense and
protracted ding-ding-ding for several minutes, as
the bell is struck by a rapid succession of blows.
As the sound of the bells dies away, Christmas
peace settles over the farms and the villages.
Stragglers who have not yet reached their
destinations hurry to join relatives and friends,
while in the farm yard the snow creaks underfoot,
and light from the windows glows invitingly into the
dark winter afternoon.
The Christmas celebration itself begins with the
solemn reading of the gospel for Christmas Day;
perhaps from a family Bible that is several hundred
years old, with generations of births and baptisme,
confirmations and marriages and deaths recorded
on its opening pages. After this, the family sits
down for the traditional meal, which to a foreigner
may seem to contrast strangely with the festive
occasion. Usually the main dish is porridge, or -
where available - fresh cod, or possibly "lute-fisk",
cod treated in a lye solution and served boiled.
This traditional fare is probably a survival from
pre-Reformation times, when Christmas Eve was a
day of fast and abstinence. Today however, the
meal is rounded off with a variety of dishes that
have no connection whatever with abstinence.
But the children do not usually enjoy the meal very
much. Their eyes keep turning to the closed living
room door, and they grow more and more
impatient with the unbearably slow pace with
which their elders finish the meal. It seems to them
as if an eternity has passed when the big moment
arrives and the door to the living room is thrown
open.
The children tumble in, only to stop short,
awestruck by the sight of the tree, aglow with the
light from real candles, and with the neatly
wrapped gifts heaped underneath. Then follows a
Norwegian ritual known as "circling the Christmas
tree". Everybody joins hands to form a ring around
the tree, and the company then walk around it
singing carols.
Finally, the gifts are distributed, and the children
can relax. The rest of the evening is spent on fun
and games and there are cakes and other good
things to be eaten.
On the morning of Christmas Day itself the family
goes to church, In previous times there was an
early morning service, followed by a big breakfast
at home. Nowadays the service is later and the
traditional meal is a family dinner, usually with pork
as the mein dish.
But in some communities the church itself will be
the same as in ages past, perhaps a small wooden
church that has served the parish since the Middle
Ages. There may be runic inscriptions on the time-
darkened walls, paintings and carvings done during
the centuries since those remote times, and
-perhaps too - for those who have ears to hear it -
the faint echo of the hundreds of earlier Christmas
services.
But Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are only the
beginning of a season of celebration lasting at least
to Epiphany, and even in some places until the
thirteenth of January - the twentieth day of
Christmas, and the feast day of St. Canute. Then,
according to a saying, "twentieth-day" Canute
drives away Christmas".
It is a season for socializing. In some places,
though only for nostalgic reasons, people still use
horse and sleigh, and the tinkle of sleigh-bells may
be heard among the snow-clad trees. It is a season
of welcoming, of warm light streaming out of open
doors as guests are received, a season of games
and merriment, when nobody mentions children's
bedtimes. It is also a time when children are
allowed to dress up in fancy-dress and to go
around from one farm to another, to be treated to
cakes and other delicacies wherever they come.
This custom is called "to go
julebukk"("Christmasgoat"), and the origin of it is
obscure; there is, however, agreement among
historians that it dates back to the Middle Ages.
This is the kind of Christmas that can still be
experienced in country districts, a kind of
Christmas very much like that which grandmother
knew. It is, however, possible that grandmother
felt like going into hibernation for a week after St.
Canute had finally put an end to the festivities; they
must have involved her in a quite staggering amount
of work.
The oldest traditions
Generally people accept their Christmas tradition
without question. They do not stop to consider that
these customs are a kind of museum,showing
glimpses of their forefathers' way of life and beliefs,
of pagan cults as well as of ancient Christian
traditions.
But Christmas, the great Christian festival, has
assimilated customs from many religions. And each
country has woven its own special
Christmastraditions from a tangle of various
threads, all leading back through the centuries. The
evergreen Christmas tree conveys the idea of
vitality and growth, in spite of winter and the dark
period, and incorporates pagan as well as Christian
symbols. The misteltoe we acquired from the
Celts, the holly from the Saxons, and the custom of
giving gifts was saken from a Roman New Year
festival. The people of Norway have among their
own Christmas customs some that can be traced
back to the pagan sacrificial offerings of their viking
forebears.
Even Yule, or in Norwegian "Jul", which is the
name for the Holiday, dates back to pre-Christian
times. Joulu or Lol was a pagan feast celebrated all
over Northern Europe.
Historians differ as to what kind of feast this "joulu"
was, also as to the exact time of the year when it
was celebrated, although there is general
agreement that it must have fallen on some date
during late autumn or early winter. Most of them
agree that it was not only a fertility feast, but that it
was also, or somehow came to be associated with,
a sacrificial feast forthe dead.
This combination may sound strange to modem
ears. But in an agricultural society, tied to the
yearly cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter,
and of birth, reproduction and death, it might have
seemed natural to link together fertility and death -
life's emergence from and return to the unknown.
The oldest of our customs seem to be remnants of
this feast. They have to do with sacrifices to the
gods and to the dead, and they generally concern
food and drink.
A Norse skald who lived about the year A.D. 900,
a hundred years or so before Norway became a
Christian country, said in a lay about his king:
if he has his way, the far-sighted chieftain. In the same connection the skald mentions Frøy, the god of fertility, and the lay thus indicates the ancient origin of one or two of the traditions mentioned above. One is the special "juleøl" (‘øl'=beer), the Yuletime beer that is brewed on the farms, and in modem times also by the breweries. The custom of brewing this special beer can be traced back through the centuries to the time when horns filled with beer during the Joulu festivities were dedicated to the Norse gods Odin, Frøy and Njord. But when modern-day Norwegians at Christmas time lift their glasses in the traditional Scandinavian "skål" (Pronounced scawl ), they give little or no thought to their viking forefathers who lifted their horns of sacrificial beer to drink for peace and a good year to come. The juleøl tradition survived the country's conversion to Christianity simply because people refused to give it up. And the rulers wisely chose to give the old tradition new symbolic meaning, rather than abolish it. The beer was no longer to be considered as a sacrificial drink: it was just to be called Holiday beer. And, according to one of the old laws of the land, it should be "blessed on Christmas night, to Christ and the Virgin Mary". The old lay's mention of the god Frøy points to the origin of another tradition: it is believed that a pig was sacrificed to Frøy at some point during the Joulu celebration, and that it provided the main dish of the subsequent feast. This may be the reason why, even today, pork is served in most Norwegian homes at Christmas. But the Christmas pork is prepared in many different ways. It may be a whole roast piglet, or it may be served as pressed pork, roast pork with sour cabbage, smoked ham or pickled "rotters. The belief in the "nisse" also goes back to pagan times. His ancestry as protector of the farm can be traced back to the man who, some time during the distant past, had first cleared the land. Often this man was believed to be buried in one of the burial mounds near the houses. At Yuletide, the feast for the dead, food and drink was brought out to the mound for him, and he was believed to come out to eat and drink. During the centuries the popular image of this much respected and feared ghost changed into the less dangerous, but still at times destructive and leprechaun-like "nisse" of Norwegian fairy tales. But the "nisse" does not survive today only in Norwegian tradition. A strange intermingling has taken place between the Nordic "nisse" and the St. Nicolas of central Europe. The result is the queer mixture of gnome and bishop that American children get to know through the poem "The night before Christmas"; the jolly little Santa Claus with the red suit, the potbelly and the merry Byes. In Norway too the native ‘nisse' contains strong elements of the imported Santa Claus. However, the ancestor of the "nisse" is not the only ghost supposed to be around at Yuletide; the dead were believed to travel about in great numbers during this season. Food was therefore left on the tables for them on Christmas night, or even in some places, for the entire Holiday period. It is an eerie thought, as one helps oneself to the abundance of food on the Christmas buffets of Norwegian restaurants, that the tradition of these meals probably goes back to the ghostly banquets of superstition. However, the abundance and variety of dishes may probably be traced to another tradition. People believed that the quantity of the food served at Christmas augured poverty or plenty in the year to come. Naturally, therefore, they outdid themselves to ensure a year of abundance. There are other Christmas traditions, too, that can be traced back to the early Middle Ages: the use of straw decorations and the sheaf of oats set out for the birds, for instance, and also the Christmas baking. But the origin of these customs is more uncertain. Some historiens maintain that they have some connection with the old fertility feast, others insist that they do not. Christmas in the towns In the cities and towns of today people tend to simplify the traditional celebrations. Even so, many of the timehonoured traditions are still upheld. The gifts are still opened on Christmas Eve and carols are still sung around the trees The traditional foods, the porridge, the "lutefisk" or ordinary codfish, the various pork dishes and the "julekake", are still served; but the most complicated pork dishes have most probably been bought readymade, and there is a fair chance that the cakes will have come from a bakery. However, the custom of paying visits to friends and relatives during the Holiday week is still kept up; and there is also a tradition of Christmas hospitality even to strangers, in keeping with the feeling that nobody ought to be alone and unhappy on Christmas Eve. Moreover, the foreign visitor who knows what to look for will soon discover that there is still a distinct Norwegian flavour even in those busy preparations for the Holiday in the city streets. There is, for one thing, the whiteness: not only the whiteness of the snow, but also the white lights used for decorations, so unlike the coloured ones used in meny other countries. And there are the traditional Christmas dishes and small cakes, the straw decorations and the "nisse" dolls, all prominently displayed in the stores.He or she will also find that some of the shop window displays have typically Norwegian themes: the "nisse" sitting in the barn with his bowl of porridge, for instance, or the sheaf of oats full of gaily-coloured birds. In addition there are, of course, many things that may be seen in other places: the Santa Clauses in the large department stores with their beards and red costumes, the Christmas trees and decorations, the happy and expectant people. Moreover, if the opportunity presents itself, a visitor to a Norwegian town at Christmas should give him or herself the treat of sampling the Christmas buffet of one of the well-known restaurants. And, if something is to his or her liking, it might be appropriate to send a grateful thought to those mediaeval ghosts who may well have been responsible for the first Christmas feast.
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