Black Immigrant Daily News
The millennials are battling to keep the Gen X Christmas traditions in Barbados alive, but the next generation coming up, the Gen Z do not seem inclined to do the same.
Here are some of the Bajan traditions that crop up in December that may not see it into 2025:
Sprucing up
– Painting rooms or the whole house for Christmas
Picking down the House
– Removing or moving around the furniture till rooms are almost bare for cleaning
Fixing up every room in the house
– Buying new fronthouse, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom curtains
Matchy, matchy
– Buying the all-in-one bathroom sets with shower curtain, mats, sink skirt, etc. plus matching the table cloth with the dining room curtains and the cushion covers with the living room curtains, while the bedsheets and bedroom curtains and carpet match too.
Pressing blinds
– Ironing curtains before putting them up at the windows
“Furniture” skirts
– Gone will be the days of bed skirts and sink skirts
Great cake baking
– They are not soaking fruits all year-round in rum to make great great cakes come Christmastime
New clothes
– Besides matching pajamas for the new-age couples, the older generations made sure they had new fits for Christmas morning or midnight mas and new clothes for when it’s time to go house to house after lunch. These young children do not bother up with such. Big Christmas morning they would just find something from in their closet
Baking ham
– With many chefs and “wanna-be chefs” offering services where they bake the ham and clients either collect or get them delivered to their door, many teens and young adults plan to simply make the ham someone else’s responsibility.
Cooking Christmas lunch
Furthermore, the young people are ready to get Christmas lunch and dinner catered if that’s an option. In fact, they are even ready to go to a hotel or restaurant on Christmas Day. Cook? Wash dishes? No thanks!
Christmas morning in the park
– Wake up between 4am and 8am to venture in to Queen’s Park with pomp and pageantry flaunting their finest Sunday best? Miss them with that.
Fresh green peas
– Planting or going out in the grounds to pick peas and shell them pint by pint or jill by jill. They will not be fighting with caterpillars for the green peas in the future.
Jug jug
– peas, peas, peas, peas, meat and seasonings … this dish may not see the next Century.
Staying in
– Family means even more to most at Christmas and thus, some only spend time with family over the holidays, but the younger generations have started partying over the holidays and each year new parties are being added. Staying in is being overpowered by “We outside!”
What other traditions do you fear will die?
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