Bonaire News
Christmas traditions on Bonaire
December 5, 2024
Christmas is coming up fast, and where better to spend the holidays than the warm, breezy, and beautiful island of Bonaire. Bonaire is known for diving and nature and has been recognized as a Culinary Capital. You may wonder what happens on an island at Christmas. This article is going to tell you all about the cheery season on an island, including the go-to food, drink, and things to do.
What do we eat?
As soon as Regatta is done you can notice something familiar reappearing at all the breakfast hotspots for the locals. Namely, the “ham di pasku”, which is translated to Christmas ham. This ham is cooked in the oven with several ingredients, including star anise, cloves, and, of course, pineapple. In case you thought that pizza was the only dish that had this tropical fruit that represents hospitality on it.
This dish is served with a nice ham and eggs sandwich in the morning, next to a delicious dish for lunch, as a dessert or a snack after lunch, and included in all the Christmas dinner buffets. With time you can see it being incorporated in other local favorites, like the jonny cake.
The best thing about the “ham di pasku” however, is not that it brings the smell of Christmas to the entire house while it is in the oven or the fact that you have a go-to snack every time you open the fridge. What makes this dish stand out is that it brings people together during the holidays and helps create the best memories. I can still remember sneaking a whole plate of slices to my room to share with my cousins as a kid.
What do we drink?
Enough about food. What do we drink, you may ask. It’s not rum. Well not just rum, since the Caribbean is known for its fun rum cocktails. Ponche di Crema is the staple drink that you get in every Christmas package, see Christmas deals for in every supermarket, and can even ask for during this festive time at almost every restaurant.
What is Ponche di Crema, you wonder. Imagine eggnog served from a nice glass bottle. It is officially classified as a liqueur, has a creamy consistency, and packs quite a punch if you don’t fill up on all the goodness at the Christmas buffet.
Some families drink it from a plastic cup, others have special glasses, some have mugs they use for the occasion, and then there are those who see this as an opportunity to use the Christmas-decorated shot glasses. Whichever way you drink it, you never drink it alone.
What do we do?
So, looking at activities done for Christmas, three stand out. First, people start painting their houses so that they can open up the new year with a nicely painted house welcoming all the good fortune that the new year has to offer.
Secondly, something that really helps the Christmas feeling come to life is decorations. So, in the spirit of Christmas, we spend money buying a tree that brings that real Christmas scent into the house and then buy a ton of decorations to make it pop. However, due to the overflow of sun and heat that we have here, the poor trees barely make it to New Year’s. But that does not stop us, we still enjoy them for the time that we can. At the end of the day, when they are dead and crisp, we put them in the yard and set them on fire to symbolize the end of the season.
Lastly, people come together (usually at the house with the best food) with the entire family to start preparations for the Christmas meals, which always lasts longer than two days, and investigations for the Christmas presents, because of course we waited until the last minute to buy gifts and can no longer order online and have to make do with what we have on the island.
To conclude, we do a lot of things, and every family puts its own spin on each dish, activity, and tradition. The main theme throughout remains the same: We all come together to eat, drink, and spend time together. We find small ways to let the people around us know that we care about them. That is the whole meaning of Christmas, after all. Ho, ho, ho!