This Christmas [Song]


Uploaded by Vincent Poag

THIS CHRISTMAS
By Vincent Poag

This Christmas let's forget our trouble
In tribute let us all be humble
And in a song let our voices blend
For Christmas, let's be friends.

Let's make the world at peace our business
In giving let us try forgiveness
And on the eve let us make amends
For Christmas let's be friends.

Make believe we’re a family
Spreading love under heaven's tree.

This season let's forget our differences
And take the time to think what Christmas is
And for a gift may I recommend
This Christmas let's be friends.

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance!
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A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Vincent Poag.

Christmas is here and I have been neglecting my parranderos and generally the people who flock to the site during this season, [especially the Trinbagonians who are not at home] looking for their favourite Christmas songs and lyrics. We should have all been distracted by what was happening in our country and I thank you for your patience. 

Christmas has come early this year with the greatest gift so far being the relief that Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh's ordeal is over. I feel bruised yet energised. I learned some lessons and faced some truths including the hardest one - that cynicism is not too far beneath my hopeful skin. I thought that the struggle would go badly for us all and asked him not to throw the pearl of his life before swine...well not in those exact words but maybe worse.

I was driven to this despair by the vile comments coming from high and low places. I have learnt that in the future I should not be so diligent about absorbing the bile or reading the newspapers' online comments or the opinion polls and most of all I should not even care about public opinion when I do not doubt the integrity of another human being. I fell into the trap of thinking, "If Dr. Kublalsingh is depending on people like these for a just resolution, he is a dead man.

But evidently the Trinidad and Tobago that is better than that was just not as vocal as it should have been and there again for me was another lesson to be learned. If those who rest on the side of justice do not make their voices heard, noisy destructiveness appears to be in the majority and can eventually dim or kill whatever hope or conviction remains.

It turns out that the newspapers may be doing us a favour on those occasions when they block comments altogether or kick some comments to the curb. I do believe in freedom of expression but for the maintenance of societal mental and emotional hygiene, freedom of evacuation is to be exercised only in the private toilets made for that purpose. I am suspecting that many of the destructive comments that I read online are submitted by trolls and it strengthens my conviction that all opinions should be taken with a grain of salt until citizens can assess the terrain from which they are springing.

When I heard Vincent Poag's song above I thought that it was a good message for us. Some really harsh words were spoken recently and we were reminded that there are cracks in our society into which the unscrupulous will eagerly insert divisive wedges to try to pit one group against the other in order to gain political and other advantages.

Christmas time is usually a quiet time for me and this Christmas I will be thinking about what this year has taught me.  I don't know what it has taught you and I would really like to know.

While we promise to work on our problems, let us at least be friends.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so. 

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

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