After all it is the last holiday that people give up on. Save for New Year’s, which is quite hard to ignore really as we try to challenge the noise pollution in Iraq, I have given up on holidays whether it’s for reasons of sanity or economics. Holy Week becomes an excuse for a week-long boozefest, Valentine’s has been conveniently chalked off as an opportunistic commercially-fueled holiday, and birthdays are forgotten right around north of your twenties. The President, whether it’s for reasons of cultural respect or to garner more votes, has found the funny bone of generally gap day-loving Pinoys, and has introduced a basketful of "national holidays" all of which still remain a mystery to me. Next thing I know people are boozing unforgivingly on a Monday night because the following Tuesday is a holiday to celebrate some sequel of a revolution that I barely remember. Any reason to celebrate I guess.
So enough, I gritted my teeth as I trudged past the supposedly merry woods of the holidays. I became skeptical of what it all meant when as a little girl I got into a row with my cousin. In the heat of the moment my cousin, who was a few years old and wiser than me, declared that I was a git for believing there was actually a Santa. "It’s your parents! Like that tooth fairy, it’s just them!" she cackled out. Of course, I may have been five but I was smart enough to take advantage of a situation. I never told my parents about my holiday revelation. I lived with my grandfather during this time and when I did come to visit my folks I found it the most convenient time to write my letter for the folks at the North Pole. Aloud I would write: ‘Dear Santa, I have been very good. I will leave cookies and milk for you and calamansi juice for Rudolph to help him with his cold. All I want for Christmas is...’ Mom how do you spell Barbie Mansion and Porsche again."
In which my parents would spell it for me with more than worried expressions on their faces. I admit I was shameless and this went on until I was 12. On my 13th Christmas (an appropriate symbolism for my bastardized holiday spell) I got a hundred bucks in my stocking. It was my parents’ way of paying me off and to stop asking them to spell what is now T-a-g H-e-u-y-e-r.
This holiday season was a particularly tough one for me. I swore to myself not to get bent, so I stopped drinking. Well, not really but I was quite good in alternating champagne with Diet Coke in holiday parties, getting nothing more than an ulcer. As luck would have it, I entered the holidays in my good girl phase and with the resolve to get through the holiday season in one piece as I have been malfunctioning the past few months (which I eventually stepped down from the final week before Christmas... my excuse, I finished my holiday deadlines at work). In between that moment of alcohol-free catharsis and my mission going belly-up (in a grand way, of course) I felt like a retired Mafiosi meeting the guys reluctanly for one final mission. It just so happened there were a lot of parties, er, missions that I had to partake in first.
Holiday parties steeped in potential scandal and soaked liberties can be quite painful to watch if you are sober. Everyone talks to you like you’re deaf, they open up to you while you are lining up in the toilet, scary men pinch your ass and the buffet table seems to be the most inviting thing in the room (which I say is disastrous for resort season). I realize I was probably worse than the lubed revelers in this Christmas past, which reinforced my promise to stay unflammable for the upcoming days.
A week before Christmas all I could think about was how to juggle my deadlines, my presents for my ever growing list, not to eat too much stuffing and how to get rid of the bah-humbug blues. What was happening to me?
Without much derring-do I realized that I was the most boring person I knew.
Here I was in my state of imposed sobriety for the sole purpose to make it to roll call when in essence this was truly the only season that I could lift out my gilded shades of jadedness.
Everything I should be thankful for was on my Christmas list. My ever growing list of extended family, confidantes and generally people who make me believe in the holidays of my pre-pubescent past like Valentine’s and birthdays again. Not that I should line my stomach with a gallon of yoghurt and drink away as I spew out disheveled thanks to my loved ones.
I greeted this holiday season with much restraint and caution. I went through the motions and forgot what it was all about. From presents delivered with palpable stress, to carols sung without much fervor to scrimping on holiday turkey and stuffing – I lost it. As an opportunistic Barbie-hungry urchin it was quite forgivable. But not as an adult who has been blessed with friends who pick up the phone at 6 a.m. and listen as I ramble on what it’s all about. I may not really have my health these days, but I do have my friends and family. Maybe I’m not quite such an oppotunist after all.
Although not all has gone to waste. I still have the New Year to make up for it. And this time I’m spiking my Diet Coke. And telling my best friend how much I love her as we line up at the buffet table fighting over the last scrap of turkey.