Of hearts and flowers

I love Valentine’s Day and all its capitalist trappings. Since I ate a heart-shaped sandwich in the 1990’s, I always looked forward to having heart-shaped food every February. I suspect that this obsession is older as I remember digging through a box of cookies to look for the heart-shaped ones when I was a child. The square cookies are made from the same dough and taste the same, the exasperated adults explained to me. I refused to budge and kept searching.

If hearts are the symbols of Valentine’s Day, what are the symbols of Filipino nationhood?   The most obvious would be the Philippine flag and Republic Act No. 8491 or the Flag and Heraldic Code of the Philippines has a list of what it should look like, what we can or cannot do with a flag, and the penalties for committing prohibited acts involving the flag.

The second most popular would probably be the map of the Philippines. T-shirts embroidered with the map are everywhere. The demand for the t-shirts must have exceeded the supply because I came across a pile with labels that said “Made in Vietnam.” I also wonder if the Kalayaan Islands (the Spratleys) were included in the Vietnam-made shirts.

In grade school, we were taught that our national flower is the sampaguita and that it symbolized purity and simplicity. We were also taught that the national tree is the narra and that it symbolized strength.   These were the choices of the the American Governor- General, Frank Murphy.   In 1934, Murphy proclaimed the sampaguita as the national flower and the narra as the national tree.

We were also taught that the national dance is the tinikling, the national animal is the carabao, the national leaf is the anahaw, and the national fruit is the mango. I’ve been told that the tinikling was replaced by the cariñosa, a dance that I have never seen performed. It is comforting to know that these are apparently unofficial as there is no law saying that these are official symbols. It is disturbing to realize that kids continue to memorize these “facts” in school despite that.

I also remember memorizing that our national bird is the maya. In 1995, President Fidel Ramos replaced this with the Philippine eagle, a powerful and magnificent animal that also happens to be in the list of endangered species.

In 1996, President Ramos declared the Philippine Pearl, also known as the South Sea Pearl, as the national gem. It is supposedly because the pearl is “a distinctive part of our socio-economic and cultural tradition” and because the local pearl industry “is among the world's leading pearl producers” and “has produced the world's largest pearl, known as the "Pearl of Allah" or as the "Pearl of Lao Tze."   In December 2009, President Gloria Arroyo signed Republic Act No. 9850 declaring arnis as the national martial art and sport.

Hearts are the symbols of Valentine’s Day because love and other emotions are believed to come from the heart. Everyone celebrating the day seems to know this. I’m still trying to make sense of the national symbols picked by our leaders through the years and marvel at how randomly they seem to have been chosen.   They also do not seem to resonate with Filipinos the way the Christmas parol and Valentine’s Day do. No one I know gives sampaguita flowers as gifts for special occasions. I’ve seen more narra trees in Bangkok than in any Philippine city. I’ve never seen the Pearl of Allah and have no idea what it looks like.

I like to think that the real Philippine nation is still in the process of being birthed and that new myths and symbols still need to be created. I also like to hope that when this time comes, we would have a clearer idea of what being a part of a nation means, including knowing what kind of leaders we should have and what our duties as citizens should include.

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