When I was a young lawyer an old Queen's Counsel told me: "If you ever want to understand a problem go back to basics". I have found that to be excellent advice - probably the best advice that I have ever received - and so I started thinking 'why'.; why was Corpus Christi a national holiday?
So, I checked it out - after all Corpus Christi is a Roman Catholic feast day and this country is not a Catholic country. Heck! It's not even a Christian country. The Christian community in Trinidad & Tobago numbers about 45 percent of the total population! This particular feast day is not celebrated in even Catholic countries such as Venezuela and Brazil which are both about 98 percent Catholic. And the feast of Corpus Christi is a peculiarly Roman Catholic one which is not particularly observed by the other Christian religions. (FYI, the statistics show that while Roman Catholicism is the majority Christian religion in the country the Roman Catholics' number less than a quarter of the total Christian population.)
So? Why? Why is this particular Roman Catholic feast day so important that it merits a public holiday?
Remember what I said at the beginning of this post: if you ever want to understand a problem, go back to basics.
It seems that what happened all had to do with that chap, Napoleon Bonaparte . Trinidad was originally ruled by Spain. (Tobago was, for the purpose of this post, British). England was at war with France when the British general, Sir Ralph Abercromby,, sailed into Port of Spain and lobbed 2 or 3 cannon balls into the town. The Spanish governor, Chacon, who hated the French (remember that France had conquered Spain at this time and that France had conquered Spain- which meant that all the Spanish colonies in the New World belonging to Spain now belonged to France) was safely ensconced in the then capital of San Jose (St. Joseph). So far from being a coward (as they used to teach us in school) he was simply acting out of hatred for Napoleon and preferred to be under English rule.
England signed many peace treaties with France during this period of the Napoleonic wars. By the Treaty of Amiens , 1802, England handed back to France everything that she had taken in the period leading up to the Treaty EXCEPT Trinidad and Ceylon. One can understand why the British wanted to keep Ceylon. After all, it lay directly in the path to England's crown jewel - India. But why Trinidad?
That answer has a little history behind it. There had been a great exodus from France of the French nobility when the French Revolution took place (for obvious reasons) and many of the aristocracy came to the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe Unfortunately for them the revolution followed them out there and when the executions started they packed up their bags and slaves and fled to Trinidad. The Spanish King had earlier promised land for free to whoever started an estate in Trinidad.
In any case, all these French aristocrats were, needless to say, thrilled that the island was now British and that the hated revolutionaries and Napoleon would no longer be in charge. But when they heard about what was being discussed at Amiens they were worried. (After all, the British were Protestant (which in their minds was only marginally better than being heathen) and they were Roman Catholic. So they lobbied for a clause in the Treaty which they felt would protect their Roman Catholic religion - that henceforth the Roman Catholic feast day of Corpus Christi would be a public holiday in the colony, thus keeping their religion front and centre forever.
And that is why this Roman Catholic feast day is observed as a public holiday in a country where the majority is not even Christian - much less Catholic!
