Feelings
Christmas past!
By Jing Villamil
ONCE upon a not-so-distant time, our Christmas trees were tall and truly pine! The Cordilleras had not yet been shorned naked and DENR was not yet defensively protective of our natural resources.
The tree was up by the first week of December, and down by early January of the next year, as soon as the Three Kings had bowed their heads and given their gifts to a greater King. For a little more than a month, we would go around the house breathing-in, without effort, lungful of that fresh cool mountain air. The piney room freshener was then just a figment in an inventor’s imagination!
Kids still believed in Santa. No kill-joy would dare point out the gifts could not have been sent down through non-existing fireplaces by reindeers dashing through warm skies over tropical waters!
Santa must have had plenty of trusted spies! He knew when the kids had been good, bad, naughty or nice. So they tried to be good for goodness sake while he was still making the list and checking it twice! And they really got what they wished for! Bicycles with guard wheels, tricycles, foot-pushed trolleys, red or blue roller-skates. Animals stuffed so stiff. Waist-high dolls with long silvery blond hair. Non-bendable long-legged Tammy dolls, the mothers & aunties of waist/knee-bending gymnast Barbies. For the nerds, literary classics in hard covers. Marvel komiks, thick coloring books, landscape puzzles in hundred pieces! Imported chocolates and candies!
Though, house activities were not solely centered on gift-giving frenzies. Days before Christmas, there would pyramid a formidable display of groceries in cans, bottles or boxes piled inside glass cabinets, on top of dining or side tables. No making-do with a budget stretched to the max. Everything locally made or imported was affordable! Mothers stocked complete ingredients for cakes, salads, pastas and beefy, porky or poultry dishes. Because there were no Goldilocks, Red Ribbon; nor Max, KFC, etc. Foodstuffs were being frozen or defrosted, mixed, beaten, baked, boiled, steamed, fried. Thigh-thick ham was pummeled, drowned in special sauces and spices, then allowed to torture the household with its dizzyingly cloying warm oven smell. Fruit cakes were thickly fruitily glazed and brandied to make one crazily drunk at first slice. Tinsel-wrapped homemade ice cream cakes to kill and die for – puffy chiffon with the insides scooped out and filled in with a cocktail of fruits whipped in cream then flashed frozen. Leche flan, honest-to-God halayang ube and yema balls dipped in crunchy caramelized sugar!
The elders made sure everyone trooped to hear the simbang gabi, in new red dress or shirt. After the mass, they tiptoed to touch or kiss the Child Jesus on His bed of hay. They went home feeling good. At least, more sure that from thereon, everything would continue to be fine in their small familial world. And thinking thus reminded them of the dining table positively groaning with holiday food they could not possibly consume in one delicious sitting!
But now, you do not really need to be reminded of your Christmases past, do you? Let us all clutch our hands to pray, to plead. Fervently. “Santa, just this one gift. Please do not let our small world break, quake or melt?”
Share your Comments or Reactions
Powered by Facebook Comments
