Deputy Governor, V. Inez Archibald.

Below is her full statement:

In other families, grandmother, mother, or some other gifted person in the family spent time sewing the new window treatments. Still in other families, a decision was made to simply wash the curtains hanging in the window. Floors were well scrubbed – scrubbed with branches of the maron bush or the skin of the oldwife fish. New linoleum was laid on those well-scrubbed floors, giving the house a fresh new smell. In some instances, walls were papered with pages carefully torn from the ever-present Walterfield catalogue. Flycatchers were hung from the ceilings. All this, to pretty up the house.

The point I am trying to make is that, whatever the situation, the Christmas season brought with it a sense of commitment – a commitment to a ritual of making the house look different and better, in order to function better. Families knew, understood, that Christmas meant a commitment to work. A fresh and clean look was the mission; a place that looked presentable no matter the size of the house or the financial position of the family.

You never knew who would stop by.

The season also brought with it the joy of Carolers spreading the Christmas message in song. You were in for a treat if you were old enough to travel with the group, or if you were permitted as a younger person to do so. And special preparation was made for the carollers. Families baked tarts: guava tart and pineapple tart and guavaberry tart and coconut tart; and cakes: plain cake and marble cake and pound cake; and breads, too: cassava bread, coconut bread and sweet bread, and potato pudding. Men killed the goats for the stewed mutton, and the pigs for the daub pork; and women grated the coconut for the tart and the cassava for the bread. Families cooked the hams and they made the guava berry liqueur – without which it really was not Christmas in the BVI. All to enjoy and to share; and neighbours visited one another, and sometimes brought gifts.2

Because you never knew who would stop by.

Christmas therefore was about our families, our communities, our commitment to work. And that same spirit of Christmas in our families and in our communities and in our commitment to work was found in the workplace. Because our communities were small, the people we carolled with and baked with and ate with and visited with were the same people we worked with.

And while we never knew who would stop by, we were always prepared.

Today, that spirit of commitment in our workplace is still alive – flagging somewhat, but still alive. We remove excess paper, dust cabinets and hang decorations and lights. We greet one another with peace and goodwill. We break bread together in our respective ministries and departmental celebrations. We exchange gifts as one way, only one way, of saying Thank You. To take it a step further, advanced organizations process how to plan for the New Year: retreats, away days – all geared at making the house (our workplaces) look and function better.

Because we never know who will stop by, so we always have to be prepared.

At Christmas, then, families rally, and communities are made to be stronger as people are committed to work. But all of this has as its foundation the birth of the Christ child, now more than two thousand years ago.

It is therefore my pleasure at this time, as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, to wish you, my Public Service family and your families, as well as the wider BVI Community, a Blessed Christmas, and a joy-filled New Year in which we will always be ready, not because we don’t know who will stop by, but precisely because we do.

May God bless you all.