Fae Ellington spending Christmas with 92-year-old mother
Published:Friday | December 25, 2020 | 9:05 AM
For veteran broadcaster and lecturer, Fae Ellington, Christmas is about spending time with family. This Christmas she will be joining her 92-year-old mother and her 90-year-old uncle for the holidays at her childhood residence in Smithsville, Clarendon.
She told The Gleaner that this time of year, although she doesn’t get excessive, she usually cooks up a storm and made it clear that she knows her way around the kitchen.
“I am not one of those persons who get exorbitant and excessive at Christmas time, but because of how I was brought up with lots of food and thing at this time of the year, I look forward to cooking. I love to cook. My friends will tell you that they would eat my gungo rice and peas 'so-so' because it was so nice. Yuh don’t have to eat it with any protein or meat kind. I do a really lovely roast beef as well, but I have kinda dropped red meat. I do sweet potato salad, macaroni and cheese, vegetable salad. And yam and corn, that one is a Fae speciality. Yellow yam with corn and a special cheese sauce, everybody would grab that thing. I do a really good curried goat as well," she said.
“I go to my mother’s every year for Christmas and cook. She’s 92 and still living in the hills of Clarendon. I will be going there this year to prepare food and so I am picking up her brother who is 90 who lives in Kingston and he and my son, we’re going to go. In previous years a few people in the community who have been good to us would come by and have Christmas lunch with us, but with [this] COVID-19 thing, that’s not happening this year. But what I have done though is that I have gotten myself some food boxes so if any of those people come I won’t let them in, but I will put a meal in the box and let them have it.”
Reminiscing on Christmases past, Ellington recalled her days at Grand Market as a child.
“I have several memories, but one that comes to mind is as a little girl going up to the square or the cross roads as we called it in Smithville in the hills of Clarendon on Grand Market night. And it wasn’t just Grand Market it was what happened there. That was when I was able to buy my 'feefee' and my balloons and my Christmas hat and my starlight and meet other children and have a wonderful time,” she said.
She also recalls soda being a novelty during that time.
“I born in the '50s innu so at Grand Market, way back when, [when] we would get soda that was the only time of year we would get it as a treat. So either kola champagne or cream soda in the glass bottle and that was a big big treat," she recalls.
Grand Market, sometimes referred to as Gran' Market is held in all major towns and cities across Jamaica on Christmas Eve. Many, like Ellington, look forward to the grand affair which brings buyers and sellers together for last-minute shopping. Activities this year were greatly reduced in light of the coronavirus pandemic.