WHAT CHRISTMAS IS LIKE IN TRINIDAD

If you’re wondering what Christmas is like in Trinidad, this description may help; Lots of LIMING (hanging out) and MUSIC . . .  a little bit of ‘spring’ CLEANING . . . lots of LAUGHING . . .  and tons of FOOD and  DRINKS!

Think you’re up for all the action? You’ll also need a HUGE appetite as every person you visit WILL be offering you food and drinks. And you got to be in a very social mood because everybody is everybody’s family! If you think you can survive, then by all means make the trip down to share the season with us.

Because we’re in the Caribbean, we do our ‘spring cleaning’ in December! So leading up to the week of Christmas most people will be painting, doing house repairs, hanging out new curtains, putting up Christmas decorations and getting rid of old furniture and other rubbish!

While growing up in Trinidad, you know that from the moment school closes in December, you got to prepare yourself for some serious chores. If you’re not polishing every single bit of wooden furniture for mom then you’re slaving away in the kitchen making what seemed to be thousands of pastelles! That leads us to the food . . .

Talk about food . . . and . . . drinks. If you make it to January without gaining extra weight then you’ve done yourself some injustice! There are so many great tasting Traditional Christmas Recipes from Trinidad. Who could say no to Pastelles? Whether it’s Chicken, Beef, Fish, Vegetarian, you name it. To go along with that, you’ve got homemade bread, Fruit Cake, Ham, Turkey, Duck, in fact, expect to get any kind of meat!

Then comes the flood of drinks - Ponche de Creme, Sorrel, Gingerbeer, Local Wines, Local Rum and a few special concoctions that the older folks might put together!

To top all of this off, you have 24 hour Parang (Trinidad Christmas Songs) music on the radio with some traditional Christmas Songs sprinkled in between. Leading up to December there are numerous Parang Competitions, Christmas Concerts, office parties and more. If you want live entertainment, you won’t need to go very far. Almost every Restaurant, Lounge and Night club will play host to live Paranderos.

 Needless to say, Christmas in ‘Sweet TnT’ is worth your visit.