Cigar & Rum Pairing
For the first time since I started writing these articles, I did not plan to share a pairing with you. Instead, I wanted to share the news about something that changed my life. To have a child is something that all parents understand from day one, it is like falling in love again. Yes, I had known for some time that I would be a father, of my first child, I was surprised by the news, which arrived during a very chaotic year that I wanted to leave behind. As the months went by, I became increasingly anxious but also concerned, hoping for a good pregnancy and a healthy baby.
And so it was that on the 9th of December, after a 38th week check-up, the doctor announced that it would be best for the birth to happen that same day. We were surprised, as were our closest friends and relatives, and four hours after the doctor’s instructions, Joaquín was born, awake and surprised about everything around him, while I was still processing the day’s events. It is a unique and life-altering experience, parents can easily get lost admiring the baby’s gestures and smiles, forgetting all that happened before and what is to come after.
So why did I change the topic of the article? In addition to sharing how fabulous these past weeks have been for me, I also wanted to talk about a tradition that is slowly disappearing, a tradition related to the birth of a baby boy: yes, I’m talking about handing out cigars when the gender of the baby is revealed after birth.
This was a very common practice during hundreds of years among Native Americans. It was part of a celebration of newborn boys that included the sharing of gifts and special contemporary foods, which later came to include cigars.
The tradition remained strong for a long time. Towards the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, it was very common for child labor to be a very lengthy process, one that usually took place in people’s own houses, with the assistance of midwives or other specialized personnel. The fathers would patiently wait until the birth of the child and would then celebrate with the guests, with cigars playing an important role in the celebration, all this while the mother was still in recovery or, in the worse cases, in eminent danger.
There are many historical documents that describe these scenarios, some in positive, others in negative ways, but the fact is that cigars were always a part of the celebration.
One of the reasons associated with the fading of the tradition, is that today it is very uncommon for pregnant women to give birth at home, for obvious health and safety reasons. As hospitals became the preferred destinations for childbirths, the tendency to have smoking celebration nearby started to disappear.
Nowadays, finding out the gender of a baby has become a sensationalistic event, with couples coming up with exuberant setups to surprise each other with displays of pink for girls or of blue for boys. I understand the intent, but this means that cigars have lost their place in these celebrations.
In my case, we opted not to do a gender reveal, instead we asked to be told as soon as the sonogram results were conclusive, this way we could plan the name for the baby who would change our lives. Also, I didn’t have a large number of cigar smokers to justify a custom cigar, instead I brought out a bunch of cigars for the guests during one of the celebrations we had for Joaquín. I am sure that, after the publication of this article, more friends will come forward and we’ll share cigars then too.
Cheers!
Philip Ili Barake
#GRCigarPairing
