Tommy Cowan’s shiny countryside Christmas

Before Santa Claus became the universal Christmastime marketing tool, planted at shopping malls and plazas across the world, children heard tales of the generous Father Christmas. Those children, usually from rural towns and villages, were satisfied with handmade trinkets; a full, hot meal; peenie-wallies in a jar; and, in the absence of pepper lights, or even electricity, they would scavenge enough shiny cigarette paper to adorn the tree in the yard.

“As a kid, I never know about Santa Claus first. Santa Claus is a guy you go meet in a plaza. From my country part in St Elizabeth, we knew about Father Christmas. Father Christmas was just a special person who would bring a gift,” Tommy Cowan told The Gleaner.

Still, a young Cowan’s seasonal festivities had very little to do with gift-giving. “On Christmas morning, we never really got presents. But our gift was all like a boiled egg, innuh! I remember my first present was a little duck. When you push it suh,” he demonstrated by quickly pressing his fingertips on the tabletop, “a egg drop out of it! How we saw Christmas was always by moonlight,” he shared.

With not much significance placed on gifts, Tommy doesn’t remember much beyond the laying duck or the boiled egg. But he remembers the sparkling scene he and his siblings created with bugs, cigarette wrappers and the moon. “I don’t remember any other present, more than we get breakfast that morning and we praise and love God, and wait for night to come to see the moonlight shine on the tree,” he said.

The reggae music producer recalled Four Aces, the smoker’s popular cigarette brand, when he was a youngster growing up with his five brothers under the rule of his own father. “In the Four Aces box, there was a silver foil. When the smoker dropped it, we as kids would pick them up and take that foil, and we put it on a tree. And when the moonlight comes out, it makes it pretty,” he reminisced.

The moonlight aided other spectacles, like blinking bugs in a jar. Tommy described: “We had a ting called tom-tom, or peenie-wallie. It looks like a small roach, and when it blinks, it gives a bright light. Remember, we had no electricity. So we would put tom-tom in a bottle and fill it. And when you hold it up, all of these tom-toms blinking!”

In addition to the country-boy antics, Tommy has vivid memories of his own father, using the morning for emphatic prayer. “My father’s bedroom, he would lock it on Christmas morning. He would speak very loudly to God and thank him for his Son. So, we thought our father was locked up in the room with him and God in there!” he laughed.

kimberley.small@gleanerjm.com