ArcaMax

When the kids tire of their holiday gifts and start whining that they've got nothing to do, just hand them some holiday wrapping paper, crepe paper, cardboard, glue and some wire.

Challenge them to create a costume. That's what thousands of Bahamians do every year for the Junkanoo Festivals and parades held on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and on New Year's Day across the Bahamian Islands (www.bahamas.com).

These costumes are amazing -- meticulously put together with thousands and thousands of strips of brightly colored crepe paper adorned with feathers and gold and silver buttons -- gold and orange, bright blue and pink, green and purple.

They transform the wearer into a tropical fish, a butterfly, a traditional "Beefeater" you'd see guarding the Tower of London, a bird or even a character from "Transformers" or "Sesame Street."

In Nassau where there is also a junior Junkanoo Festival in which local schools compete and parade, even preschoolers take part.

"They just have to hear one drumbeat and you have their full attention," said Arlene Nash Ferguson, the Nassau grandmother who has made it her mission to get young Bahamians to participate, founding the Educulture Bahamas Junkanoo Mini-Museum and Resource Centre (www.educulturebahamas.com) in Nassau, her childhood home, (www.nassauparadiseisland.com).

Nash Ferguson, a veteran educator, has been involved in Junkanoo festivals since she was a preschooler and she continues to work hard to promote native Bahamian culture to everyone. What she began with programs for school kids in the Bahamas in 2000 now attracts cruise ship passengers and other visitors for workshops in Junkanoo costume making where you might make a headdress or a wall hanging to take home.

The music, she explains, is still centered on cowbells, which were available on plantations, and the goatskin drum, an African instrument. The traditional Junkanoo horn was a conch shell; today, there are a variety of other horns and whistles used as well.

Some hotels are also getting into the act. The Grand Lucayan Resort (www.grandlucayan.com) on Grand Bahama Island, for example, has its own Junkanoo band that performs for guests in their costumes all year round, as well as during the holidays when there is also a Santa's Nature Walk, among other activities. We literally walked into the weekly Junkanoo parade while there!

Junkanoo festivals began during the 16th and 17th centuries when slaves in the Bahamas were given a special holiday around Christmas and could leave the plantations. They'd celebrate with African dance, music and costumes. The slaves decorated themselves with materials they could find -- straw, sponge, plants. The costumes have always been crafted from whatever was available, even newspapers.

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