But it’s different now for me. New York has that picture perfect Christmas. On the mornings when there is suddenly snow in Central Park, winding my way through the bramble to sled down the hill behind Belvedere Castle is one of the pastimes I do with childish enthusiasm, passing the cross-country skiers making tracks in the bridle paths, my red sled slung on a rope behind me. Ice-skating in that pocket of the park in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel, the mid-town skyline rising up against the gray sky with a glacial magnificence. Huddling outside an underground Lower East Side bar to smoke a cigarette, bitching about Mayor Bloomberg, bumming a light from the hipster chick in full-on ‘80s glam, and trying unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation. Chilling in Chelsea with Anton and Enzo, my brothers in arms, making a home with each other while making lives for ourselves. In the 6 Line subway, rubbing up against the huge mink coats of the big African-American ladies, going up to Harlem for some Sunday soul food. Dressing to the nines to watch the New York Philharmonic celebrate the season with heartbreaking gentleness as they fill the Lincoln Center with Beethoven’s 9th. Finally finishing Madame Bovary over scones and Rooiba at Tea and Sympathy in the Village. And in the dog park near Gracie Mansion, watching the little terriers in Burberry or Vuitton clothing – coats for some of them, entire body suits for others – run like children up and down and around their playground.
These are the little things that make the holiday season. Just like back home in Manila, what makes it a merry Christmas are the little personal details of experience that we keep with us, because those cannot be found in a Norman Rockwell painting, or a store in Glorietta, or in books, or anywhere else but in our own hearts and minds.
The promise starts with Thanksgiving, that’s when we know that the holiday season has begun: when friends who’ve become our family in our transplanted exile – fellow refugees following dreams and finding them day by day, little by little – all descend for a pot-luck in someone’s flat, bearing gifts of Bavarian Gluhwein, a Tunisian Turkey stuffed with couscous and pistachios, French cheeses rich like ice-cream from the Fairway Grocery on Broadway and 74th, a vintage port from the year of my birth, Cuban cigars smuggled across the border from Canada, laughter and diversity of backgrounds abundant in that little apartment huddling against the coldness of the coming winter and a city that echoes loneliness inside you if you let it.
In a place like New York your friends become your family, and Christmas proves this. These people you’ve chosen and who’ve chosen you become your gifts, and it matters if you’ve been bad or good to them. And in a way that’s much better, choosing each other – you’ve no worries about that crazy tita you always end up next to at the table, you don’t have to listen to your 14-year-old mayabang cousin’s bolero exploits about girls in Bacolod, you don’t have to pretend you like the company even when you don’t, and you don’t have to answer those infernal questions of "Whose son are you?" and "Atenista ka, ‘di ba?" I actually prefer Christmas away from family now: There is an authenticity as brutal and wonderful as the threat of being no one or someone entirely your own. Besides, you can pick your friends, just like you can pick your nose. And you know how the rest goes.
To me, Manila is home. And at no other time of the year is home as safe, warm and special a place.
The symbolic nature of the holiday season helps us subsist. Almost as if a last resort during troubled times, the Christmas holiday is an impetus to survive. This year’s holiday season is so contagious, so infectious that I seem to see it at every hour in every nook and cranny of our city: From the giant and brightly wrapped gift that is Rustan’s on Ayala Avenue to the row of twinkling lights and hanging Santa Claus on the gate across Lola’s house to the odorless green tree overcome with a halo of gifts. But it is not these universal symbols that seem to speak a secret language of cheer and generosity that make the Manila Christmas exceptional.
Subtle to the eye but close to the heart are my own experiences of local customs of merriment that carry so much more meaning because they are as homegrown, innovative, original and fun as Christmas can be to me: haggling at the bazaars and catching myself speaking with a Chinese accent that was picked up from weekend trips to Kowloon – ‘One doh-la only, me no moneee." There are also late night get-togethers celebrating the arrival of a balikbayan friend; the scent of Scotch or San Mig Pilsen at Simbang Gabi the next morning; food-tripping on wholly Filipino delights whose uniform round shape provide much needed early morning structure and consistency – smoking bibingka, chewy puto, steaming castañas, biting queso de bola, and guiltless leche flan.
We partake of them while absorbing wisdom from the early rising titos and titas as they speak of the newest political controversy. (They can’t actually be serious in mentioning names like Erap, Vic and FPJ.)
How can one help but enjoy the gaiety that the Christmas season offers, not to mention the climax of the New Year’s Eve bash. But beyond the superficial, which I often catch myself swimming in, is the true meaning of Christmas. Infrequent but so compelling, there are moments that touch our hearts and show our souls and present to us the essence of the Manila Christmas: The voices of the often pesky street children resounding loudly and strongly in unison, singing Christmas carols and making a plea, singing the paradoxical song of helplessness and hope as they thug against and shake their eternally empty tins that are decorated in Imeldific glamour. There are also the eye-catching parols hanging along da riles, ingeniously made out of all they have – paper cups and dyaryo – often imitated but never the same.
There is also the intense and irritating clapping as PR 105, at long last, lands from Dubai the night before Christmas only to be greeted by immense queues and by deep-pocketed men in jackets. Nevertheless, there is pride in being a Filipino – home at last, safe and sound. There is also the smiling toothless vendor triumphant he got one over you and earned enough to cover the cost of his flashing red lit Santa hat, plus a cup of coffee and slice of bread too. This is what Christmas in Manila really is.
New York undoubtedly is a tough city, and its winters are savage. But it cloaks itself with a thick overcoat of joyousness and tradition, lights and music, a tenacity to celebrate in the face of abbreviated, dark days and fiendish cold. It’s a similar spirit, perhaps, that reminds me most of the holidays in Manila: FPJ may loom large in our future, and every single time we say that it can’t get any worse we find that it actually does, indeed. But celebrate we still do, trying our best to find the joy that is actually there, wrapped with ribbons beneath the trappings and traffic of the exuberant and crazy holiday season.