Holiday Entertaining in the Bahamas, Amanda Lindroth–Style

Come December on New Providence Island, situated 184 miles southeast of Miami in the Bahamian archipelago, there are no crackling fires or evergreen boughs covered in frost. No horse-drawn sleighs or icy snowmen. And the closest you’ll get to a white Christmas is strolling one of the island’s famed alabaster beaches overlooking the blue-green Atlantic shallows. (Admittedly, not a bad trade-off.) Regardless, the holidays arrive with the same sense of whimsy and wonder, especially for the friends and family of Amanda Lindroth, the renowned hostess and South Florida–raised interior designer.

Rather than leaning on traditional Rockwellian trappings, the region’s yuletide magic results from both the island’s diverse global community and general conviviality that extends well beyond the season. It was this spirit that captured the imagination of Lindroth, who first visited New Providence in 1988 as a young newlywed. “Living here, you have Greek friends and English friends and French friends and Portuguese friends,” she says. “It’s a fascinating place filled with fascinating people.” She came to fully appreciate that alchemy when she returned to New Providence a few years later, this time for good. She eventually divorced, and then met her second husband, the Swedish-born developer Orjan Lindroth, in Nassau.

Living in the Bahamas, Lindroth found purchase and purpose for her creativity as she began transforming homes there for herself and friends. Inspired by the beauty of the lush landscape and the classical lines of the Caribbean’s historic architecture—along with the relaxed sophistication of the expat lifestyle—the self-taught designer built a robust client list, with decorating offices now in Nassau, Palm Beach, and Charleston, South Carolina. She has also authored two design books, including Island Dreaming, which hit shelves in October.

“I love the comfort of good English interiors and the symmetry of good French ones,” she says of her Lindroth Design firm’s tropics-influenced old-world aesthetic. But an easygoing elegance that’s distinctly Bahamian imbues Lindroth’s spaces: whitewashed walls with intricate molding, antique case goods harboring a family’s heirloom shell collection, colorful textiles in cheerful stripes and playful prints. Well-appointed guest rooms with handmade canopy beds, wide verandas, rattan seating, and wicker lighting, too. “These are holiday homes,” Lindroth says of her local projects, “and understanding how our clients entertain and live is a big part of creating intimacy. We want their guests to come in for the first time and be dazzled.”

The same goes for her own parties. Lindroth entertains with a dual emphasis on sumptuous details and the comfort of her guests. And whether it’s a Christmas dinner party, an Easter brunch, or an impromptu Saturday-night shindig, a sense of joy permeates every gathering. The consummate hostess even designed her longtime family home, Hope Hill, a cheerful manor perched above the Atlantic, with parties in mind. Before she sold the villa last year following her adored husband’s death, it provided the romantic backdrop for dozens of glittering celebrations—evenings crystallized in the memories of guests not for their glamour (though that was not lacking), but for their laid-back joie de vivre. “It’s that Amanda magic,” explains Carlye Jane Dougherty, a family friend and the art director for Lindroth Design. “Her dinner parties feel fancy, but they’re also incredibly fun—never fussy.”

“You learn by watching others,” Lindroth says. “When I first came to Nassau and New Providence, we were invited to these really grand dinner parties, and I just made a photographic memory of how they were done. There was a bit of form to them. It was a very English way of entertaining.” And though she’s remade that old-fashioned formula in her own image over the years, it still informs the general run of show. Seated cocktails are followed by a formal dinner on the veranda, where assigned seating and simple yet luscious meals fuel a lively flow of conversation. Lindroth’s party playlists lean toward 1970s folk rock like Cat Stevens and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but the distant rumble of the Atlantic, the rustle of the palms in the evening breeze, and the cicadas’ seasonal song provide the true soundtrack. Following dinner, guests move to the living room for an English-style coffee and tea service and a round (or three) of nightcaps, depending on the crowd.

In Lindroth’s mind, though, a truly memorable evening starts before the first guest arrives. “The doors should be flung open, the lights dimmed, candles lit throughout the house,” she says. There should also be plenty of comfortable seating, a well-stocked bar, and extras of everything. Thirty-one years in the Bahamas have taught her how quickly an eight-person get-together can balloon to a blowout. “When we’re preparing for parties here,” she says, “we tend to buy things in dozens.”

That maxim rings particularly true during the holidays, when residents’ far-flung families and friends fly south for the season. This time of year, Lindroth adjusts her menu to reflect local holiday traditions: pigeon peas and rice, johnnycakes, a spiral ham with pomegranate seeds and pineapple, and the family’s favorite coleslaw, a tangy version made by longtime Lindroth cook Crimson “Crimmy” Roberts, with tiny (but fiery) Bahamian bird peppers Roberts grows herself. The decor gets a twinkle-light-and-tinsel glow-up, too. Lindroth favors a Clark Griswold bigger-is-better approach to tree selection—though evergreens here arrive via shipping container from Canada.

Her annual festivities took an even more fanciful turn when her daughter, Eliza, was born. The family began taking part in the island’s Christmas golf cart parade and contest with a Whoville-like enthusiasm that has earned them more than a few blue ribbons. Decades later, it’s still a family favorite. “There was one year when we didn’t win because a friend invited Amish carpenters to turn her golf cart into a Christmas cabin,” Lindroth says with a laugh. And because this is the Bahamas, there’s an annual boat parade. The family decorate their thirty-six-foot Schooner Queen, a restored 1970s fishing boat, to join a flotilla that welcomes wee Optimist sailboats and mini superyachts alike.

For the event shown on these pages, the parade floated through New Providence’s Old Fort Bay and included an afternoon raft-up, another favorite local pastime during which friends and family anchor together, swim, kayak, and “drink lots of rosé,” Lindroth says. She and Dougherty dreamed up a nineteenth-century spin on the menu for the occasion, including a majestic Auguste Escoffier–inspired shrimp-and-lobster-tail tower with Bahamian spiny lobster and Marie Rose dip, a vintage British cocktail sauce that adds mayonnaise to the traditional American base, and iced-down stone crab claws in a silver Champagne bucket. In addition to offering the requisite rosé, they mixed batches of local Rum Dum cocktails, a piquant blend of light and dark rums, fresh lemon juice, egg whites, and simple syrup, invented by the beloved New Providence bartender Wilfred Sands.

Later, the group adjourned to nearby Old Fort Beach for an alfresco dinner on the sand. Once the territory of notorious pirates like Edward Teach and Anne Bonny, this now-serene slice of coastline needs little in the way of staging. Lindroth and Dougherty nonetheless decked the table with Herend china and sterling silver, dressing two oversize candelabras with peppermint-striped tapers and threading the arms with trailing streamers of bright bougainvillea, a bloom at its peak in December. “The effect is whimsical and lovely,” Dougherty says—much like Lindroth herself.