You-letide

As I stare at nothing for hours while my computer clock flickers past 9, 10, then 11 p.m., I ponder whether I will roll out of bed for tomorrow’s simbang gabi Mass or roll over and experience death by slumber inside the Venus flytrap that is my warm puffy bed. Why do I do it? Honestly, I do this Pinoy farmer ritual because I want to feel Christmas. Also, it may sound corny, but I believe this tradition might die out once one person like me fails to continue it. It’s like putting on a dorky Superman costume once a year at Halloween just to feel Halloween, and the same goes with every other seasonal event. It is something that simply can’t be missed because seasons are deliberate reminders that we are human. No other species on earth celebrates anything with as much bravado as us.

However, my affair with Christmas is uniquely different from my feelings about its seasonal siblings. Because I am keenly aware of them and yet like a far-off friend, I wonder if the spirit of our relationship is still vibrantly alive when he comes to visit again. Admittedly, the charm of the season has evidently changed as the soundtrack of my sentiments has matured from Santa Is Coming To Town (And What Is He Bringing Me?) to the overflowing sappiness of My Grown-Up Wish List.

The past few years I even thought that I had become numb to the O Noels and tra-la-las of Christmas carols and even resigned myself to the humbug of Scroogery. Yet, last weekend, I felt the angelic glow of Advent in the company of friends in Baguio. There was a warm fuzziness inside me and my heart seemed to grow three sizes bigger like a newly reformed Grinch as a jazzy Starbucks rendition of Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire was playing at the periphery.

Bright Yellow Lights

Then, this fuzzy feeling suddenly died as I came back to the faux flashiness of the city — a bus lighted with red disco dancing lights threaded along its upholstery helped me realize that there is a God and He has a sense of humor. But seriously, the twinkle of yellow lights wrapped around trees and everywhere possible made me doubt my weekend epiphany. Was this toffee-nut latté high just sentimental gullibility caused by a bunch of flashing multicolored electrodes? If that was it, I was better off just watching a Pokemon marathon with the yellow rat Pikachu rapidly flashing its tail and sending me into a holiday coma. So, this brought me back to my I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus concern. Had I lost the spirit of Christmas? And how did this come about?

My personal falling-out with the other seasons are easy to trace. Halloween is gone because I would surely lose all my sensible friends if I dared to wear a spandex Power Rangers suit. Valentine’s Day is crossed out, too, because chocolate is too precious to give out to others — even loved ones. Yet I realized the Christmas season had seemed to fizzle out because of our “I am what I buy” society. With the increase of “needs” such as PDAs, iPhones, facials, multi-multi-vitamins, colored rubbery slippers, and so many other things to add to our life wish lists, it has become so expensive to be human. Just look at the cardboard shanties and you will discover consumerism at its core, the aspirational market cramped inside, thinking that being human means possessing cell phones, stereos and plastic clogs because of how the affluent unconsciously define the dignity of others. There is definitely a deeper kind of poverty: when people are dysfunctionally depressed because they have so little, not knowing that having even more can still cost so much to one’s weary soul.

Soul Food

And this candy cane conundrum leads me to discover the necessity of Christmas and why my affair with this season is more than mere trimmings on a tree. Christmas is a precious gift because it reminds us that we can be happy with so little and in fact nothing at all. We, humans, can be fed by stories. This is what makes the season oh so joyous. Beyond Christmas cupcakes and the overflowing of company party beer, this is the month when we are filled with stories from people we either haven’t seen in a long time and others we are with every day as we shared what had happened this past year. It is also the time of typing lose threads with family and friends as we thank them for making the story of our lives this year possible. Thus, realizing that what also makes people full is the sharing of lives. It is finding out that what makes us complete is not a bottle of centrum but discovering that people can only complete people. Hence, finding out that the best gifts in this world are persons.

Yet, at the center of this season is a story of hope. We must remember that reason we share stories during Christmas is because Christmas is a story. It is about husband Joseph married to woman-without-sin Mary who will give birth to a God who became man and was born in far worse conditions than the slums today for humanity — meaning you and me; it is about three magi waiting for a king to be found in a manger; and, as C.S Lewis says, at the depths from its magnanimity and implausibility, the beauty of such a story is that it is true because Christ is a historical figure whose story inspires us 2,000 years later — meaning today, now and forever. Thus, it gives us hope that despite the disparties of life and all its horrors, that a person and even a God will always love us at the end of each year.

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The Nativity Story is found for free in the gospels of John, Matthew, and Luke. You can even listen to it live during the Christmas Eve Mass on December 24 in Catholic  churches everywhere.

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Share your fuzzy stories at http://readnow.i.ph.