From Pepperpot to Parang: A Caribbean Christmastime

A flickering, yellow glow emanates from the warming oven. Inside, freshly made plait bread rises from its pillow of yeast and flour. The sharp smell of dark-brown rum tinges the air as it glugs out of its glass bottle to reach the impatient currants and cherries waiting in their bowl. Their holy union will soon form a rich, rum cake that makes the old ladies wine and the young children flee. It’s almost midnight, but parang music plays on. Its laughing ladies and folk guitars don’t fade until the final gift is slipped under a glimmering Christmas tree and the last child’s heavy eyelids give way to dreams of Santa on his sleigh. 

When I think about Christmastime in a Caribbean household, I reach instinctively for the foods and music that come from all different parts of the region. As a Guyanese Muslim, it feels natural to put up a Christmas tree while eating traditional Guyanese pepperpot, baking Jamaican rum cake, and drinking Puerto Rican coquito. As much as each Caribbean country has its own set of traditions, we remain bound by a shared allegiance to good food, music, and family. This makes it easier to borrow, give credit to, and enjoy the customs that were shared by older generations from different circumstances and worldviews.   

Take for example, the soca parang that sprang from Venezuelan immigrants to Trinidad & Tobago. From Amerindian, Spanish, Mestizo, Pardo, and African backgrounds, the parranderos brought with them the claves, maracas, and violins that told the story of Jesus Christ. While their form of singing originally started with caroling around neighborhoods, it later evolved to soca parang with the influence of Trinidad’s soca artists. In soca parang, the familiar brass horns and playful Caribbean artists sing (sometimes even in elementary-level Spanish) about Christmas time mischief surrounding food and family, though many songs still give reverence to Jesus Christ. This mix of Venezuelan rhythms and Caribbean artistry is a testimony to the beauty that can come from our diaspora’s unique blend of cultures, languages, and experiences. 

These seemingly small connectors of food and music reflect our larger shared political history–one formed in struggle and sugar cane, in singing and storytelling, in sharing happiness through dance and good food. These are the traditions that anchor our dynamic, shifting culture even as it crosses borders and plants new roots. This is what gives space to all versions of our cultural identities to breathe and consider how to integrate or update the familiar Christmas traditions we might have grown up with. 

For me, Christmastime in a Caribbean household will always mean that while chestnuts roast on an open fire, pepperpot can bubble on the stove. Scrunter can play alongside Nat King Cole. I can look back, amongst a difficult history, to resurface old recipes and perhaps share them online or through text messages or into the actual hands of friends and family. The way people maybe shared peanut punch or sorrel in old villages, when they met to dance and talk old time stories and welcome Christmas in its simplicity. I believe, like this, the plait bread continues to bake. The rum soaks and stretches all the way to the edges of its cake. Our music plays on and the children sleep warm, wrapped like pastelles, dreaming.