How do you celebrate Christmas Day in Hopetown, a Bahamian paradise among the Abaco Islands?
You bring your sloop Makaleka alongside the city pier and moor.
Margaret ties green ribbons on the starboard shroud. Donna ties red ribbons on the port side shroud. We go ashore.
The children gather in the schoolyard. Santa comes. He drives a golf cart. His beard doesn’t reach to his Bermuda short pants. He “ho..ho..hos” and gives the children ice cream.
That was the Christmas remembered from the 1990s. Four centuries after loyal British from New England and the Carolinas sailed to the Bahamian paradise across the ocean from Florida. They resettled because they chose not to join the American revolution.
Remembered before a 2019 hurricane destroyed many buildings in Hopetown. Before searchers looked for bodies in the collapsed single-story houses.
How will they celebrate Christmas in 2019? Will Santa bring ice cream to the children? Don’t know. But predict Santa will come. And maybe, depending on the rebuilding and renewed power supply, bring ice cream.
Do know that on Christmas we celebrate the hopes of the world.
One reason to name a small, tropical community ‘Hopetown.’
Photo credit: Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line
