Is It Easy Being a Caribbean Father Christmas?

How to Help Father Christmas When You’re in Grenada 🙂 If Father Christmas didn’t have helpers all over the world, the old fellow wouldn’t last long. Is it easy, at his age, to fly around the tropics in a fur coat searching for the presents people have asked for? If we don’t want the old boy to have a stroke on New Year’s Eve, we need to help him out.... Having found nothing in the nearest shopping centre that even vaguely resembled New Year’s presents for the young sailors, we set off for Grenada’s capital, St George’s. “There’s bound to be a big children’s shop there, if it’s this civilised even out here where we are!” After cramming ourselves into a minibus with 16 other passengers (it turns out you can squeeze an entire school class in there, teacher and all!), we flew uphill. The contraption rattled with loose parts and lively Caribbean music, dodging other cars and pedestrians, while the first mate struggled to suppress a smile all the way. What’s up with you? the captain asked as we got out. It’s a madhouse :). Grenada’s Capital The sprawling leaves of the breadfruit trees grin after us, seeing that we still haven’t given up hope of finding a modern shopping centre amid this chaos of narrow streets, Chinese shops, Rastafarians with torn nylon tights on their heads, and vendors selling ginger and cocoa.... The almost-European resort of Prickly Bay, where we are anchored, has suddenly morphed into a noisy African-Asian town with an unusually cosy marina (a harbour for yachts), old towers, and a cruise liner squeezed heaven knows how between the green hills. The only decent shopping centre in St George’s backs onto a hill with historic ruins on one side and opens onto the international seaport on the other. Its uneven arcades are dotted with souvenir shops and outrageously expensive duty-free stores. In Grenada’s capital, Father Christmas is simply doomed to melt twice—first into tears at the sight of the prices, and then from the futile, relentless search for presents. Despite spending two hours racing through the bustling shopping streets, we still failed to give Father Christmas a hand. We’d have been happy to support Chinese small businesses, but it was hard to see why our children might need these brightly coloured, clattering lumps of plastic and dolls with terrifying vampire eyes. The other kind of Chinese business—the kind that manufactures goods for major toy brands—had made it even to almost-rural Tobago, but hadn’t reached Grenada (if only we’d known a week earlier!). Having declared the operation a failure, the captain and first mate squeezed into a rattling contraption already packed with people. Hallelujah! The minibus climbs the hill; whenever the driver’s assistant spots pedestrians dawdling by the roadside, he jumps out on the move and persuades them to continue their journey with us. Some agree, and we hurtle skilfully downhill at terrifying speed, enjoying a sliver of scenery through the window. Next stop—the beach. Or the cemetery, whichever you prefer. The cemetery adjoins the beach and shares its car park. Some people get out of the minibus carrying funeral wreaths, others carrying inflatable swim rings. That’s life—what can you do? It brought to mind an episode from the film The Return of the Musketeers: Why is she dancing? This is a wake! Well, it is a FRENCH wake! By the time we’d wrestled out the camera, wedged between the captain, the seat, and an enormous Black man, the cemetery and beach had disappeared around the bend. The couple in the front seat are clearly riding in a local minibus for the first time—the woman, just as I did two hours earlier, smiles all the way: “It’s a madhouse!” The Caribbean way of life lies in the art of accepting every side of it with ease and equanimity. And the presents...—there will be presents, no matter what! 🙂 Happy New Year!!! Friends, we wish you a Happy New Year! May it be brighter, kinder, and more colourful than the last! We wish you readiness for adventure, good health and joyful thoughts, dreams fulfilled, and the support of those you love! May your hopes for a miracle be crowned with success—with some great or small, but very real miracle! Love and be loved. Happiness in the New Year! The crew of the sailing yacht Lady Mary, from the Lesser Antilles in the south-eastern Caribbean Sea.