We heard rumors of the auspicious Christmas tree bonfire a few months back, long before Christmas. "What!? You've never been to one?" Said Steve
Skerritt, astounded that Sloan had not witnessed this fixture in Guam
haole culture. We received an update email a week ago, prepared a pot-luck dish, and arrived last night, when we were told to, around 6:30pm.
We had expected a relatively small affair but cars were parked all the way down the dirt road off the main road. The coconut and corrugated steel shack at the center of the lawn was lit with colored chili pepper shaped lights powered by a portable generator. It looked like the party was almost over. The roasted pig was stripped to the bone. The aluminum trays of beans, pasta salad,
couscous special and fish cooked in coconut milk had been picked through. A good hundred or so people with luxury lawn chairs, the ones with cup holders and head rests, had found spots on the lawn overlooking the beach. Packs of kids spun neon glow sticks tied to the ends of strings like Polynesian fire twirlers. A strange wooden contraption sat dormant on one side of the beach and a pile of brown Christmas trees grew steadily on the other.
We scrounged for some food. There was surprisingly a lot left despite first impressions. We sat on our towel amidst the towering lawn chairs and watched the sun set. Not long after dark, when 40 or so more people showed up, people were more appropriately
inebriated, and enough kids had lost their slippers, two older gents, the "torchbearers" of this particular event stood on the sand and called for the attention of the masses. One was wearing a glittering black robe and had some kind of Christmas light crown on his head. He was carrying a long stick with a bundle of cloths wrapped around the end. The other was joyfully smoking a fat cigar. I can't remember exactly what he said, something along the lines of "Ladies and
Gentlemen . . . etc." I was more concerned with the bundle of cloths being lit by the cigar. I could smell the gasoline thirty feet away. The long torch lit quickly, but instead of approaching the pile of dried trees the robed man did a showman's jog over to the wooden contraption which, as it turns out, was a homemade catapult. He lit some dried ball of something, maybe a coconut, in its harness, they told the children to step back, and the thing let loose, sending the flaming ball of whatever a good forty feet over the sand. Just fifteen feet too short. But these guys were perfectionists. Instead of prodding the ball over to the tree pile some young buck with a wet towel put out the first coconut and they tried again. This time it fell 5 feet short. Again the flaming ball was
extinguished and again they re-loaded the catapult. With each attempt the crowd grew more comfortable and moved a few steps closer to the line of fire and mountain of trees.
With the third attempt the blazing ball landed just at the edge of the pile and quickly the flames ran up the edges of the trees. Within ten seconds the pile was ignited, engulfed in orange flame. It was windy and smoke and sparks blew in a long column towards the nearby trees. We heard stories that in previous years the pile had grown so big and the flames so high that neighbors on the other side of the beach-front forest had to hose down their roofs because the sparks had cleared the tree-tops. This year was a bit more modest, nonetheless, those seated within 50 feet of the pile had to move back because the heat was unbearable.
It was over in less than 10 minutes. The needles had burned to ash and only the skinny trunks glowed a dull red. Someone brought out bags of marshmallows. Musical instruments emerged from car trunks and the three-quarters moon lit the beach well enough.
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