Christmas once again

It’s almost Christmas again. How quickly the year has flown. It seems like it has just begun, and I have just finished delivering my gifts, then here it is again. I keep saying I don’t like Christmas anymore now that my children are old and I am older, but this year I took my old bamboo ladder and put it in a corner of my house. Then at the American Women’s Bazaar I saw one of those foldable star lights that I bought and gave away last year and decided to buy one for myself. I rummaged through my kitchen cabinets and found my red grape lights. I wound them up the ladder. The first week of November only and it is Christmas in my house.

I have even begun to scout for Christmas gifts and I will write about them. I sell at the Legazpi Market almost every Sunday. I don’t know where I get this taste for palengkes and tiangges. Did you know that those two words, which I always thought were Tagalog words, are Mexican? Really, we got them from our Mexican colonizers who came here disguised as Spanish colonizers.

Anyway, come to our market in Legazpi on a Sunday. You can buy a lot of things there. I took a short walk around and filled up my list so maybe I will do this every Sunday until I get everything catalogued. If you enter the market from the parking lot and walk to the end, the last wall on the side of Rufino/Herrera, then you can begin to scout.

The first store is Juana’s Jewelry. She makes them herself and she has lovely jewelry. I don’t know her prices as she wasn’t there last Sunday but I estimate from P100 to a couple of thousands. After her stall is a lady, Malu Reyes, who sells cards and tags, plain or embossed, personalized or not. Her cheapest item is P20 and the most expensive is P200. You also can have the cards personalized for an additional P25. Then there is an assortment of second-hand books, which you probably don’t want to give as gifts, but they also have Carica, the herbal medicines, and an assortment of accessories, the cheapest of which is P50 and the most expensive is P1,400. All these are in the first tent on your left side.

On your right at the corner is the stall of Banj and Mike Claparols, who sell things made from handmade paper and other things from bone China. The cheapest item is a ball for P50 and a five-figure nativity scene for P2,600. Next door to Banj is a young couple who sell prints and T-shirts. The T-shirts are silk-screened and cost P300 each and the prints range from P500 to P3,000.

They are followed by soaps, wonderful soaps that you slice. It costs P120 for 100 grams and they have other wonderful organic products — dishwasher liquid, spray deodorizer that’s good even for piggeries. It’s a wonderful stall. I keep wanting to buy my soap there but I receive so many soaps as gifts that I haven’t run out.

Next stall is A Photo is Worth a Thousand Words, where photographer Reni sells his work as bookmarks for P10, refrigerator magnets for P25, or you can choose from his gorgeous photographs and buy them framed for P500. He is then followed by a shop that sells quilts and other little things like creative activity books and toys for children. The cheapest is a strawberry keychain made of beads that costs P50. The toys are P350 and if you want to buy a baby’s quilt, that would be P1,500.

She is followed by a lady who sells everything from small trays for your desk, to jewelry boxes, to big square hampers, which range in price from P70 to P1,400. Then the dress-and-pillow outlet of Romy Glorioso, which sells beautiful, short kimono-style blouses for only P300, though the most expensive gown on display is a Japanese wedding kimono at P25,000. In between these two he sells the most gorgeous pillows.

These are all across the second tent on the left.

In that second tent are the oil paintings of Sunny Garcia, who also sells vases for P300, and dzi bead bracelets for P1,200. Followed by FrameLogic, a framer who also sells paintings and prints from P900 to P5,000. Then there’s me. I sell my watercolors there and my postcards for P200, my books, my anting-anting necklaces for P600 and up.

In the booth next to ours is an ethnic store from Mindanao, which sells everything from the cheapest T’boli bracelets for P20 to beautiful hand-woven malongs. She has everything in between — attractive bead chokers, dusters, shirts — all very reasonably priced. Across from her beside the Japanese wedding kimono is Bleu et Blanc, which sells a novena purse for P325. It is the perfect gift for your profoundly Catholic friends. It has a container that holds novenas. The cheapest item is P95 and the most expensive — an embroidered linen tray cloth or placemat — is P375 for a pair.

I could go on but I think I will end there for this week. We do have interesting stuff in our market. I have only covered maybe one-tenth of the entire market. I will not stop until I’ve mentioned everyone — dry goods first and then food — as my Christmas gift to my market buddies. We have sold together for two years. I really should write more about them.

Come over and shop. You will enjoy yourself and will spend much less. The market is at the corner of Rufino/Herrera and Salcedo Sts. and is open only on Sundays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

See you there!

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