Trinidad and Tobago Festival Foodways

Festival

⚠ MORE RELIGIOUS PUBLIC HOLIDAYS THAN ALMOST ANY COUNTRY, AND EVERYONE EATS AT ALL OF THEM. CARNIVAL before Lent — the biggest in the Caribbean — with corn soup, doubles, bake and shark, and the pre-dawn J’Ouvert. DIVALI, a national holiday, with vegetarian food, parsad, sweets and thousands of deyas; the Divali Nagar at Chaguanas. EID-UL-FITR, also a national holiday, with sawine. PHAGWA/Holi with abeer. CHRISTMAS with PASTELLES, ham, sorrel, ponche de crème, black cake and PARANG — the Venezuelan-descended Spanish-language Christmas music that is entirely Trinidadian now. HOSAY, the Shia observance turned public procession. ⚠ THE CROSS-COMMUNITY EATING IS THE DOCUMENTED PATTERN and is the point.