This Christmas day will be like none other in my entire life.
Traditionally, my Christmas Day is divided into a set number of activities, starting with a group of Santa Claus-like friends who slide through my doors every Christmas morning, some bearing gifts but all with the single intention of seeing how much of my stock of seasonal liquids they can consume before heading off to their next victim.
After my bath and breakfast, it’s time to laze about, all the while mentally timing two sets of Christmas pots and ovens.
You would be surprised if you came to my house on Christmas morning to find none of the associated mouth-watering sweet smells of various dishes being cooked and cakes and breads being baked because nothing like that happens here.
That activity takes place in two separate homes and allows me the pleasure of stuffing myself full of all the lunch goodies imaginable not once, but twice.
This has been and continues to be the Christmas Day tradition for years where I eat my first lunch at the home of my in-laws in Speightstown, and then at the home of my mother and sister in Checker Hall, St Lucy.
But it’s definitely not a case of eating the same foods twice because those two kitchens prepare two distinct Christmas Day favourites of mine, quite apart from the regular turkey, chicken, fish, rum cake, sorrel and so on.
Firstly, Speightstown is where my mother-in-law “Mum” Massiah and her clan prepare some of the sweetest baked pork to be found in any place in Barbados on Christmas Day. And the world already knows that when it comes to food, pork is my first love.
Secondly, I don’t think I have ever revealed this publicly before but my second love, when it comes to meat, is duck. That’s right. Whereas, in my opinion, pork is the sweetest of the four-legged kind, duck is the sweetest of the winged two-legged kind.
That’s where my sister Leandra in Checker Hall comes in. She, in a tradition set by my late father, raises her own ducks in her own backyard, fed and fattened with her own grains and other foods.
And every Christmas Day one is selected and specially prepared for my second lunch in the late afternoon with my clan, which has always included my mother.
You would remember me writing about her celebrating her 99th birthday last month and how we were eagerly looking forward to her making it to the big 100.
Unfortunately, that achievement is no longer to be and this year the sweetness of all the joys that Christmas Day has traditionally brought will be tinged with the bitterness of her absence because of her passing to the other side last weekend.
She, like the rest of us, was anticipating toasting Christmas Day with her favourite glass of red wine but, moreso, to the champagne that would flow on November 9 next year in celebration of her becoming a centenarian.
But what is to be will be and nobody can change that. So Merry Christmas to one and all.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com