Food and ancestor worship

Last Thursday, I visited my parents’ graves in Loyola Memorial Park. It took us exactly 15 minutes to get there from our home in Alabang. We lighted candles, said some prayers and laid flowers on the headstones. The Filipino tradition for remembering the dead, if the intent is really to remember the dead, can be done within an hour. That has not always been the practice.

Times have changed. At the entrance of Loyola were all the known fast food outlets, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Lapids, Selecta ice cream and of course, the inevitable soft drinks. It was a feast of junk food stands. Not to be outdone in the commercial orgy were pretty girls walking around distributing real estate development brochures. This was all too different when I was a child.

When I was younger, preparation for All Saints’ Day began the day before what with all the cooking and preparing to be done for a 24-vigil at the tombs of my grandparents in the North Cemetery. It was like going on a caravan, with potfuls of adobo, nilagang manok, rice all cooked the day before, soft drinks, beach chairs, mahjong tables, toys for the children etc. etc. It was reunion time with aunts and uncles and cousins. But we were told then by the elders that our feast in the North Cemetery was nothing compared to the more sumptuous feasts in the mansion-like mausoleums put together by the Buddhist Chinese just over the side of the fence. Sumptuous foods were symbolic offerings to the departed and the feast itself, a reaffirmation of the love between the dead and the living. To them the dead were still around to commune with and food was one vehicle through which this is done.

And if you think that food for the dead is only found among the Chinese in cemeteries every November 1, wrong again. Philip Hall of the Telegraph writes that ‘food to tempt back the dead” as part of the Mexican festivities for the dead. The Mexicans, from whom we got some of our dishes and celebrations, also prepare food every November 2 for Old Hallows. The celebrations are meant to both evoke and invoke the dead. They  put up altars and lay out the favorite food and drink of those that they loved, respected or even those they merely put up with.

So what food and drink would you like to be remembered by when you are long gone? Better put that in last will and testament so your children do not get it wrong. I can almost see many listing sinigang and adobo, the typical Filipino soul food. Filipino apartments abroad, anywhere in the world, can be distinguished by the smells of these classic dishes. So chances are it can lure dead Filipinos back from the grave.

Here’s how Mexicans do it every all souls day. They put two tables together and cover them with sheets of orange, blue, white or purple crepe and cut out ribbons of the same material. They decorate the surfaces with lots of Marigolds (azucena has the correct fragrance for Filipino dead) and then place photos of dear ones on the table. They then  lay out the food and drink the departed liked together with few of their possessions like their tortoiseshell glasses, a book of poems, a favorite teddy bear, yes even soil from the garden.

Then they scatter a trail of bright yellow petals right up to the window ledge leaving the window slightly ajar. They light the candles on the altar and go to be with the thought of their “muertito”. According to Mexican lore they will come back briefly and accompany you once more.

*     *     *

We can laugh about the food and wonder whether it is for the living or for the dead but it is true that on the day of remembrance, we pay homage to our ancestors. We may have been Christianized by the West but turning love of parents to ancestor worship comes from the Chinese who made it into a religion. No wonder the ancestor paintings of grandfather and grandmother occupy a central part of a family room, even the very modern. If you ask me, I am certainly more comfortable with a picture of my grandmother or mother whom I knew and loved than any pictures of saints. That is why the idea of ancestor worship is not as incomprehensible as some Westerners might think.

Ancestor worship is generally any variety of religious beliefs and practices concerned with the spirits of dead persons regarded as relatives, some of whom may be mythical. Center to ancestor worship is the belief in the continuing existence of the dead and in a close relation between the living and the dead (who continue to influence the affairs of the living). Among the Chinese both the male and female have strong ties to familial piety. It is the children’s duty, particularly the sons, to revere and care for their parents as they enter the afterlife. Pictures of the deceased parents can be found in many Chinese and Filipino homes even long after they are dead.

The food on the tombstones in the North Cemetery may not be as sumptuous as those found in the Chinese mausoleums next door but the same spirit of joy and communal feasting flow from them.

*     *     *

Scientist retracts article. Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called “Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life” in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society. He speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, “one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.”

Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time but recently creationists have been referring to his article to push their point that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has decided to retract it rather than it be used by creationists.

He found many entries relating to his work on compounds called polymers; on information theory, a branch of mathematics involving statistics and probability; and other subjects. But others were for creationist sites that have taken up his 1955 paper as scientific support for their views which he thought was inappropriate.