The odd thing is not that Christmas in Jamaica is cloudless and hotter than hell, but that for Jamaicans, this IS just, Christmas. Reindeer would melt, Santa would hyperventilate. The elves would be too stoned to help.

Christmas is so culture specific that whilst New York celebrates it in overcoats and scarves and snow, just a thousand miles down the same coast in Miami Santa is a gay icon in red lycra shorts and a white crop top with a mahogany tan.

But why should Christmas be white? In any sense of the word. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in the middle east. Hot there. So basically some north European chose to represent his own Christmas experience in the snow and that became the world’s vision of the holiday. They don’t have a white Christmas in Jamaica. In any sense. Nor do they have to. Historians aren’t sure of the exact date of Jesus’ birth; no-one’s ever seen his birth certificate. But its reckoned to be about Easter time. Not in the religious sense, that would be too ironic, but just around April. So how it became a midwinter festival of massive expenditure they don’t know. But such things are generally dictated by the ‘first world’ and in most of that winter is cold and snowy. Job done.

It does work on a beach though. Works really well.

Not without a struggle.

Happy Christmas

A xxxx