Winner of the 2022 Chicago Folklore Prize
For many, December 26 is more than the day after Christmas. Boxing Day
is one of the world's most celebrated cultural holidays. As a legacy of
British colonialism, Boxing Day is observed throughout Africa and parts
of the African diaspora, but, unlike Trinidadian Carnival and Mardi
Gras, fewer know of Bermuda's Gombey dancers, Bahamian Junkanoo,
Dangriga's Jankunú and Charikanari, St. Croix's Crucian Christmas
Festival, and St. Kitts's Sugar Mas.
One Grand Noise: Boxing Day in the Anglicized Caribbean World delivers
a highly detailed, thought-provoking examination of the use of
spectacular vernacular to metaphorically dramatize such tropes as "one
grand noise," "foreday morning," and from "back o' town." In cultural
solidarity and an obvious critique of Western values and norms, revelers
engage in celebratory sounds, often donning masks, cross-dressing, and
dancing with abandon along thoroughfares usually deemed anathema to
them. Folklorist Jerrilyn McGregory demonstrates how the cultural
producers in various island locations ritualize Boxing Day as a part of
their struggles over identity, class, and gender relations in accordance
with time and space.
Based on ethnographic study undertaken by McGregory, One Grand Noise
explores Boxing Day as part of a creolization process from slavery into
the twenty-first century. McGregory traces the holiday from its Egyptian
origins to today and includes chapters on the Gombey dancers of Bermuda,
the evolution of Junkanoo/Jankunú in The Bahamas and Belize, and
J'ouvert traditions in St. Croix and St. Kitts. Through her exploration
of the holiday, McGregory negotiates the ways in which Boxing Day has
expanded from small communal traditions into a common history of
colonialism that keeps alive a collective spirit of resistance.
