By Vernon Khelawan

On several occasions during last weekend’s Parang in the City event I was lulled into lapses of reverie as the powerful sounds and songs of the pulsating music of the Christmas season soothed my tired body as it wafted through the lower downtown air.

Since then I have been wondering about the power of our seasonal music in terms of its ability to assist in the new evangelisation.

It is no secret that the composers of the original lyrics associated with parang music made great effort to announce to their people that the world-changing event of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ was at hand and the people had to get themselves ready to receive Him.

Maybe the first ever effort at evangelisation manifested itself when the three wise men left their homes and began the journey to search for the Saviour and having found Him presented Him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

That the Father sent an angel to dissuade them from taking the news of the newborn back to Herod who was intent on killing him, was the ultimate in evangelisation since by taking different routes back to their homes was in fact an impactful measure of evangelisation.

Nothing has changed since then as evangelisation has continued throughout the ages, manifesting itself as it might in many different forms until today. In Trinidad and Tobago as Advent rolls into Christmas Roman Catholics and non-Catholics alike receive the message of Christmas in song through the genre of traditional parang music.

Camsel’s “Parang in the City” held in the Catholic Centre car park last weekend sparked a lot of interest in the traditional seasonal music, when many of the songs selected by six of the leading groups in the country, echoed the real meaning of Christmas – the birth of Jesus Christ.

In much the same way evangelisation can take place by more public displays of home crèches and the larger versions in our churches and even public spaces. In the spirit of living the theme “Catholic Family, become what you are”, the home crèche can be a great evangelising tool. May we not miss the opportunity.