“Look I found one, but it’s not going to be easy to get.”
“Why not, what’s the problem?”
“Well, it’s in the garden of a house up by the hospital. It is too public and it will be hard to get away with it.”
“Well, I’ve got a balaclava and some black fatigues. Maybe we could do it one night this weekend, but then, Shari -- the chainsaw might give us away anyway don’t you think?”
“Yeah, you’re right, but a handsaw will take forever.”
I sat there listening to this conversation between Sonja, level-headed organiser extraordinaire and mother of two and the very enthusiastic yet sometimes less practical Shari, our friend and hairdresser, thinking, “it’s just too damn difficult to get a Christmas tree in Vanuatu”.
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| Centrepoint's Snowy Santa Windows |
Frankly, the whole “traditional” white Christmas thing just doesn’t work in Vanuatu despite numerous attempts to make it work. When it is 33 degrees Celsius in the shade of a palm tree and afternoon tropical thunderstorms drive you from the pool on a daily basis Santa Claus in his big furry coat travelling in a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer seems just a little out of place.
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| Mobil Petrol Station's Snowy Santa Windows |
Yet, as you drive down the dusty main road of Vila in late November you start to see the jolly little man in red popping up all over the place. Centrepoint Supermarche has him painted on the windows, as does the Mobil station across the street. They obviously used the same painter. Bon Marche has him hanging over every aisle. With no major department store or mall, there is nowhere to sit on Santa’s knee, but there is a Santa Parade. Well, sort of, last year it consisted of some poor sod dressed up in a Santa suit on the back of a truck. The truck went down the main street and Santa threw candy to pedestrians. The dash to scoop up the tasty morsels nearly caused a riot.
You had to feel sorry for Santa though. It was sunny and about 35 degrees and the patches of darker red on the suit showed the poor man was slowing sweating to death.
It is not just Santa either. The attempts to re-create snow are sometimes even more out of place. You wouldn’t believe the number of shops that have “snow” sprayed on their windows, then again I guess it might be condensation…
No, I’m pretty sure it’s that snow in a spray can stuff. The snow obsession is not just for shopkeepers either. Friends of ours told us that a few years ago, a guy decided to have a white Christmas and covered his house and garden in some kind of white confetti stuff. It didn’t look much like snow apparently, but every one came to have a look anyway and a frolic in the winter wonderland.
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| Centrepoints Christmas Cheer |
I must say, I understand the desire to have a white Christmas. Having been raised in the colder regions of the Northern Hemisphere, the plummeting temperatures, the long dark nights, the hint of snow in the air are all signs that Christmas is just around the corner. I mean, even in Arizona and California darkness falling at 5 in the afternoon gave you some hint. I guess I should be grateful for the little reminders, because, if it weren’t for all this stuff popping up around town, I would probably completely forget Christmas was coming.
The Southern Hemisphere has none of the signs. Christmas falls in the middle of summer, it’s hot even in New Zealand. The days are long and the nights short. Digging the car out of a snow bank to go to grandma house for Christmas dinner is replaced by packing the car for a barbecue at the beach. It just doesn’t work for me, I’m afraid.
Last Christmas, our first in Vanuatu, we decided to go for a less traditional type affair. It really worked and we proved it could be done a tropical way. We had 13 people including 3 children to Christmas lunch. The event had originally been planned for the beach, but our usual beach spot was not available and our house had a pool for the kids – big and small. So, it was at our place. There wasn’t an evergreen in sight and not one flashing fairy light either.
Everyone brought something so it was not a big cooking thing and fortunately the farce of a hot roast dinner in the middle of summer as many families in New Zealand suffer through was foregone. Everyone agreed to make it tropical and make it simple. Many of the dishes, like the mussels, were served cold. Except for the napkin rings it wasn’t beginning to look a lot like Christmas at all, at least not at our place. Which was fine with me. I don’t mean to sound a grinch and I was looking forward to the gathering, but with the sun shinning, the temperature pushing the top of the thermometer and the palm trees swaying in the light breeze it was a nice day, but not Christmas.
Being a Southern Hemisphere boy, however, Rob sees all the current signs of Christmas as normal, and he really got into the spirit. He went for special, which means complicated, of course. He made Christmasy napkin rings – two versions one toilet rolls covered in Christmas wrapping which he decided against and other using gilded cherubs which he went with in the end. He designed a beautiful centrepiece for the table complete with gold and silver spray-painted pineapples and ferns placed around a gold coloured pedestaled orb. He said the orb was to signify “the coming the new millennium”. Yeah, I know…
The table was set beautifully. He made chocolate pecan fudge. The fudge, together with nougat, was divided up, wrapped in clear cellophane with a holly print and tied off with red ribbon (in a small bow of course). He found someone who imported salmon for the dish he was creating, etc., etc. Let’s just leave it at he loves Christmas.
Christmas morning started with a champagne breakfast at our friends Tony and Julia’s place. They had a tree and air-conditioning, so with the drapes pulled I could almost imagine Christmas morning.
After ‘breakfast’, it was back to our place. After more champagne, we sat down to the first course. First entrée was prawns, scallops and calamari done in a cognac cream sauce. This was served with cooked bananas. Next was marinated green-lipped mussels in a chilli sauce. The THIRD entrée was crayfish followed by a lime sorbet. Then we took a break before the mains. Most of us went outside on the deck. Some swam, some chatted and everybody drank more champagne.
Rob and Julia stayed in the kitchen and created the mains. A little while later we returned to the table still full from the entrées. The mains were salmon stuffed with Chinese cabbage, roasted peppers and pinenuts by Rob and baked ham contributed by Julia and Tony (ok so we didn’t give up all the traditional fare). And if all that was not enough we had Pavlova and cake for dessert. The meal itself began at 2:30 and finished up at about 6. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten and drank so much.
The next morning we got up to another brilliant day. We had been invited to spend Boxing Day, Family Day here, at a bach (cabin) up the coast at Havana Harbour. We arrived just before lunch was served still full from the day before. We were introduced, had the obligatory glass of champagne, a look around, some conversation and then got into lunch, again.
Lunch consisted of a huge plate of whole crayfish, a pork roast, sweet potatoes, bananas roasted in their skins on the grill, French bread and lots of French red wine, nicely chilled as always in Vanauatu.
Needless to say, it was a fabulous two day event that most found to be Christmas in a Southern Hemisphere kind of way. While it didn’t seem to be all that Christmasy to me, I liked the fact that it suited the environment - hot pudding, heavy food and Santa squeezing down the chimney were no where to be seen. So, why the obsession with ‘traditional’ Northern Christmas stuff? You would think that people down this part of the world would have adapted symbols to better fit the environment.
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| Vanuatu's Christmas Tree |
We’ve got “Christmas trees” all around us. The flame trees with their fiery orange flowers are in full bloom at the moment punctuating the green hills around town. Then there are the trees with lemon yellow flowers that hang like grapes and next door to us there is a big tree bursting with hot pink flowers. Gardens are flush with pink, red and rich purple bougainvillaea. Hedges of red hibiscus line driveways and roads. Who needs fake green and red Christmas decorations when all this is about?
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| Neighbour's Hot Pink Tree |
I have to say that one “traditional” decoration that does work very well is the fairy lights. I’m not talking about the red, green, blue and yellow ones that light up the fronts of businesses in town and I’m definitely not talking about the ones that drive you mad flashing all night. However, the plain white ones that currently bathe Port Vila in a cool white glow really work.
UNLECO, the local electricity and water company that thrives on monopoly pricing and would make a fabulous poster child for antitrust law campaigns, does put some money into the community at Christmas and works wonders with white fairy lights.
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| Christmas Lights on Lini Hwy |
They have taken strings of lights and made sheets of white light that hang over the main road through town. Every 50 meters or so another one of these sheets of light spans from building to building across the road. The seafront trees and trees around the market are also covered in white fairy lights. It is absolutely beautifully done.
Going through town on a dark summers night the white light really makes the ground glow, you almost feel as though you are driving through a winter wonderland. That is, of course, until you open the door of your air-conditioned car and step into a wall of heat and humidity.
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| Fairy Lights on Vila's Seafront Palms |
Anyway, the trees that I find most amazing covered in lights are the palm trees. UNELCO has wrapped the trunks of those on the seafront and outlined each palm frond with fairy lights.
Anyway, as I turned around to pick up my yellow plastic Christmas crown that I got from my Christmas cracker, my mind wandered back to the topic at hand and I saw the solution to the Christmas tree dilemma.
Sonja, Shari, Rob and others were in deep discussion over what they were going to do about a tree for their Christmas lip-sync competition fundraiser. Shari had decided to go ask the people who own the house near the hospital if we could chop the top off it. Rob was on to putting a gold star on top of a Christmas tree created from overlapping sheets of white cloth hung on the wall. It all sounded way too difficult, not to mention traditional, but the trees on the seafront provided a solution - or at least I thought so.
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| Rob's Brilliant Idea |
I suggested getting a big potted palm tree and covering it in lights. The Christmas traditionalists looked over the fake little green Christmas tree in the centre of the table and gave me that what-a-silly-idea look. Rob ignored the idea as he does and continued sizing up the wall for his white sheet Christmas tree.
As the week wore on and the ideas all got too complex, though, it was decided that a fairy lights on a palm tree was a brilliant idea. A small group went down to the local nursery and picked out three nice sized palms that were put up in the Rossi Restaurant for the big night.
As usual, everyone is now saying what a wonderful idea Rob had to use the palm trees. Story of my life! Anyway, the palms looked tremendous fitted out in gold and red and it was nice to see something a little more Vanuatu developing. I’m not getting my hopes about any major progress to a real Vanuatu Christmas though.
Because, the day after, as I was cutting the fishing line we had used to hang the red balls, gold stars and red icicles (ok, so sue me, some one did get the snow thing in) while preparing the palms for transport to a new life at the golf club, I noticed a 13 foot Norfolk Pine walking into the Rossi. It was placed in a pot and sat there waiting to replace our Christmas palms. I guess the traditionalists win again.
Copyright 2001
[Note: This tale was first told in December 2000 and a few days later I got an email from a former nurse at the hospital who was then in living Scotland, but knew exactly which tree Shari was eyeing up for the chop – small world, eh? And, alas, the Rossi is no more.]
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