Gordon Robinson | Christmas Day at Casa Tout will be different this year

I grew up with a nuclear family Christmas even after my parents divorced. The traditions were simple. The family made the Christmas pudding together a couple of weeks in advance. It was a day-long job involving a Yabba (ask your Granny); a wooden spoon; and ‘rubbing’ (or ‘manually creaming’) butter and brown sugar until not a grain could be felt. Then add a dozen eggs (one at a time, each separately beaten with a rotary egg beater), then flour; then the wonderful smelling mixture of fruits soaked in wine (we couldn’t afford Brandy). Line the baking tins with butter and ‘grease paper’, then stand them in water while baking for what seemed like eternity.

Christmas shopping was also a family affair, as we were accompanied by Mummy to buy inexpensive gifts for siblings and close cousins. She ensured we attended Midnight Mass as often as she could, and was always present on Christmas morning (no matter the legal status of the marriage) for the ceremonial opening of gifts. Christmas morning breakfast was a rare treat. We got fried eggs, more than one rasher of bacon (unheard of) and allowed a cup of coffee (instant), which was banned during the rest of the year.

Christmas day was spent with immediate family (including maternal Grandma) alone, but turkey and ham was the standard fare. Then the day was spent marvelling at our Christmas gifts, especially those brought by Santa, who managed to elude our strategies to catch him at his job year after year. There weren’t many gifts back then, but we were happy for whatever we received. Always!

Christmas has always been The Old Ball and Chain’s favourite time of year. She grew up with different traditions, because, as the daughter of a Finnish immigrant who, while living in England, married a Jamaican salesman named Winston McLean with eight siblings. There was Donald, Lloyd, Peggy, Gloria, Cissy, Dorothy, Rita and Joy. So they were a caricature of the old Jamaican saying, ‘What a hell when di rice won’t swell and di family large!’

Old BC was the baby of three children (the first two, Michael and Susan, born in England) born after the couple came to live in Jamaica. At that time the McLean family lived at 17 Gardenia Avenue, Mona Heights. I lived at 16 Gardenia Avenue. Christmas for Old BC was spent at gatherings of the entire family (those that still lived in Jamaica), rotated between Aunt Peggy’s and Aunt Gloria’s homes. Her mother, after her parents also divorced, was in the habit of having her own Christmas dinner (most often on Boxing Day) so as not to interfere with the McLean family gathering.

The family in Finland would always send a Christmas package to which Old BC looked forward every year. It included Finnish treats (some for adults, some for children) but always chocolates that were very European (smoother than the western hemisphere versions) and raw, salted fish, appropriately called ‘Silli’, that only real Finns could appreciate. On her father’s side, Aunt Dorothy (one of five who lived abroad) always wrote, especially at Christmas. Whenever Aunt Dorothy wrote there was a gift involved. As the ‘baby’ of the family, Old BC got all the privileges from absent Aunts Dorothy and Rita.

PRODUCT OF EXPERIENCES

Her mother, Lahja Terttu Palomäki (we knew her simply as ‘Terttu’), as a product of her experiences around the time of World War II when Finland was twice invaded by Russia, was a hoarder, but not in the way you see now on American TV. She owned a freezer that was a huge joke in the family, as I always alleged that anything you needed was in that freezer, including a new carburettor. Everything was ‘saved for Christmas’ and Christmas day was a very big deal.

Old BC remembers her mother booking a telephone call to Finland well in advance for every Christmas Day. Archie and Edith would sing “those were the days” before modern telecoms. Terttu would call her Aunts every Christmas Day. They kept her during the war times, as her father was in the army and her mother died when she was very young. Old BC remembers her mother crying (an unusual happening) on every Christmas Day call, and that she missed the snow on Christmas Day.

So, after I chased Old BC until she caught me, we merged the family traditions. With the help of my mother, we tried to keep the children at church, although I had long ago lost respect for that institution. I grew up in the church at St Margaret’s, where my mother was a fixture, especially during the time of seminal Rectors Rev Brian O’Brien Wright and Rev McPherson, with whom I had interesting discussions regarding the Old Testament’s ingrained misogyny and homophobia. Every childhood Sunday included church service (I could recite it by heart) and Sunday school. But, as I grew older and more aware (nearly said ‘wiser’, but that would be presumptuous), I drifted away from the Church. My final break from that place of misguided worship came more than 10 years ago, when I visited the Sunday service of a church I considered (still do) to be sincerely doing God’s work. I arrived as the service began and sat, as my fellow law faculty students can testify has been my lifetime habit, in the back pew. It wasn’t long before a member came to me and gently informed me I was sitting in “her seat”. I left immediately and have never again entered a Church.

But Grandma was the one who ensured that her grandsons had their chance to make their own choices. So, mainly due to her efforts, all three were baptised and confirmed at St Margaret’s.

FAMILY TOGETHERNESS

But church isn’t a major part of our Christmas spirit, which is focused on family togetherness and thankfulness for family and friends. When they were alive, both Grandmas were present on Christmas Day, my mother from the crack of dawn (so she could witness the opening of presents; hers a little later). We begin with the Robinson tradition as the father makes breakfast of eggs and bacon with coffee. The mother is in charge of Christmas Dinner that includes immediate family, her sister, nieces, grand-nieces and friends. For many years, the Christmas Day celebrations alternated, as often as possible, between our home and close family friend Wayne DaCosta’s, because he always had a huge gathering on the day to which we were always invited, and his family to ours. Old BC’s brother is married (for longer than we) to Wayne’s sister-in-law, so the two families were always one.

This year, for the first time (excluding 2020, which was COVID-enforced) Old BC will be without all her children on Christmas Day. The Ampersand (now a Canadian resident), who brought his Grenadian-Canadian wife and one-year-old son to Jamaica last Christmas, is now in Grenada with Grenadian Grandma. Old BC will be sad on the day, but lovely photos of grandson Know-All on a Grenadian beach instead of in the Canadian snow help. Also, Wayne, who succumbed to COVID complications in March 2021 before vaccines were available, will also be missing, although he lives eternally in our hearts.

SkullDougery (aka, The Computer Whiz) and baby Sputnik will be here, but her niece Thandi (the daughter she never had) is in Georgia with her husband and family, so there’ll be no curry goat this year. But we’ll always remember the Ampersand, age circa five years, waking up at 3 a.m. Christmas Day, only two hours after Santa visited. At that time he had a very pronounced lisp and a slight stutter. So the Grumpy Old Man (aka, Old Grey Balls) and The Old Ball and Chain were awakened from a deep sleep by The Ampersand’s (having discovered evidence of the intruder) very loud:

“Douglasth! Douglasth!! Wake up! Wake up!! Thanta Come!! Thanta Come!!!”

Ah, the joys of Christmas.

Peace and Love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.