Lucian Christmas with Corinthian Mohicans

I awoke on Christmas Morning quite happy, with several invitational options for where to go to eat, drink and party, or just stay home.

But, if your imagination is sufficiently elastic, you’ll understand I actually did a-little-bit-of-all: ate more, drank less – and didn’t drive at-all…

Best-of-all that day, however, was spending a couple of afternoon hours over a traditional creole lunch with old friends from the last century, fellow centennial hopefuls I often describe as ‘Saint Lucia’s Last Mohicans’.

I never read ‘Last of the Mohicans’, the classic novel by James Fenimore Cooper set in 1747 during the French-Indian war, but I do know the moral behind that story is the importance of respecting different cultures.

I’ve always respected other cultures, but one of my big fears is unfolding before our very eyes: important aspects of our history and culture are simply disappearing quickly, or being made invisible.

I’ve always held that after the diminishing generation of us between 60 and 80, it’ll be left only to the millennials and the advanced artificial intelligentsia of the 2030s and 2040s to fight for Humankind’s survival by the 1950s, against more-intelligent talking machines – the 21st Century stone-age equivalents of which are already hosting press conferences today.

I sat with a few fellow ‘Lucian Mohicans’ on Christmas Day afternoon in Daphne’s Corinthian Balcony, sipping Sangria between other island-mixers, us driving recklessly down Memory Lane in ways that convinced the two younger souls among us that there actually was Life before Internet and Wi-Fi.

The likes of Leo ‘Spa’ St. Helene, Derek Walcott, Dunstan St. Omer, George Odlum, Neville Skeete, et al, would no-doubt have felt quite at-home that day, chatting below Spa’s triple-seven (777) Volkswagen number plate with the likes of ‘Paba’ (Monsignor Patrick Anthony), Mac Donald Dixon and the diminishing number of the last of their Lucian version of the Mohican generation.

Our recollections that afternoon of their oral reflections of ‘Lucian History and Culture’ were ever-so-often seasoned with the type of spicy flavoring that’ll only come from Daphne’s sharp tongue and long memory.

Our memories flirted with nostalgia at levels transcending today’s short-term thinking, widely generated by overdependence on IT, with talking books reading themselves to us while we quickly dump the arts of reading and writing.

Oh, how the times have changed…

This year, we talked (a long bit) about the number of historical buildings sold or auctioned by local banks to highest bidders, many others still standing on rotting pillars, some already destroyed (like Her Majesty’s Prison), others burnt to ashes – or simply left to rot because no one has offered the sky-high prices being sought by heirs and successors.

We also talked a little-bit-more that afternoon about our second Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott and how his legacy is being handled since his departure to Neverland.

We pined over the fact that a few years ago, a plaque unveiled at the family-home-turned-museum on Chausse Road in his Castries had Derek’s name spelt wrong.

I revealed I’d “just learned” that Derek’s home at Cap Estate, overlooking Pigeon Point, was “up for sale” – only to be told it was “already sold”.

And then someone asked what’s become of the ‘Rat Island Foundation’ launched in 1997 to honor Derek and his works…

The collective nostalgic ride was also quite inspirational, one among us actually, that Christmas night, going home to pen a chapter or two for a new book that was, until then, merely a bright figment of an imaginary flight of fiction.

So-much-so, that we’ve been asking each other why we only wait until Christmas Day to take

an annual ride Down Memory Lane.

Earlier this week, as the year came closer to an end, I gave short thrift to my usual personal random choices of Persons and Events of the Year, but Rayneau Gajadhar and Mathurine Emmanuel came to mind, alongside the seven-year-old boy who wrote a book online.

Rayneau earlier this year blamed local gubernatorial ‘lethargy’ for the ease with which he moved to St. Vincent and moved agriculture there much-better and faster than he had in mind for here – and his Vide Bouteille branch showed this year – more-than-ever and again Navita-style – that Christmas in Saint Lucia can indeed look and feel brighter and merrier than anywhere else.

Mathurine brought her multi-award-winning ‘Shantaye’s World’ book and film to audiences and readers in New York, Toronto and London this year, launching yet another in her series of legendary movies – Made in Saint Lucia for the world.

And Julienne Alfred, who trekked her way into all our hearts in 2023…

As events went this year, my list would have topped with the St. Vincent Summit that lowered tensions between Guyana and Venezuela and Christmas being ‘postponed’ in Palestine and Ukraine.

I also thought of the comparably unequal value of lives elsewhere, with prisoner swaps of three Palestinians for every Israeli released by Hamas from Gaza – and Venezuela releasing ten wanted Americans for one top diplomat Caracas held captive by the US and highly-awaited back home.

This year I wrote the most odes to departed colleagues, but it’s the sort of thing that comes with age and has nothing to do with anything we can change – unlike in Gaza, where nearly 100 journalists have been killed in less than 100 days.

Like others of late, 2023 was another year that came and went faster than one wishes…

My son Jeavaughn died in October, but five days before his departure, my second grand-daughter (and third grandchild) arrived – way ahead of his free one-way flight to the Land of No Return.

So, with a second son joining my only daughter to bring forth the next generation of tomorrow’s new and artificially-intelligent Lucians, here’s to 2024 being another fruitful year for all of us who planted good seeds and watered our gardens early and well-enough to guarantee continuing bountiful harvests beyond climate change.