Memories of Christmas past

Icannot say how it came to be, not that it matters really, but as far back as I can remember the guestroom in our old house in Bonifacio St. was always the hub of Christmas preparations. It was my training ground of sorts, where I first touched December, tangibly learning to create with imagination and fingers all that it stood for in my child’s eyes – Santa Claus and glitter, sequined balls and beribboned pretty packages. I loved it so.

While mommy and yayas Juling and Hilda wrapped away, my sister Caren and I wandered conspicuously around the big bed where everything was spread out, playing with scraps of ribbon and paper, draping it here and there on empty shoe boxes, displaying our growing wrapping prowess (or lack of it, as the case was then) in the hope that mommy would finally have enough confidence to pass the much-coveted, all-important task on to us. Our brothers Matt and Jules were too young then to care about such things, and I know now more than I ever did then that it really is a girl thing. Boys can stuff a perfectly pretty present in an old but clean sock that lost its partner, pronounce it wrapped and ready, and actually get away with it.

The time was not long in coming and the confidence thing did happen – when mommy could leave us with nothing more than presents and instructions on who to give them to, and truly be at peace knowing we would not get things all mixed up. Heaven forbid we would end up giving the perfume and powder duo that was famous for smelling like sunshine and roses to Tito X while the box of golf balls meant for him would end up in Tita Y’s hands. Or for Lolo to receive Lola’s embroidered and lace-trimmed throw, for dainty Cousin S to receive the horrific monster Nephew G so desired. And so we were very careful, and succeeded in not making any such unforgivable mistakes, at least none that we know of to date.

To say that the task was far from perfunctory to me is an understatement. My sister enjoyed it, too; together, we did very much, but I suspect (and she agrees) that I loved it more than she did, more than I probably even should. I could go on all day and night if need be, and with quite limited materials my imagination stretched wider and longer than a child’s wish list at Christmas.

In the province we had clusters of small shops as opposed to the Goodwill and National Bookstores in the bigger cities like Cebu and Manila. Whatever was available for sale in those shops at Osmeña St. or Rizal St. were all that we could choose from. There was the pretty/ugly (until now I cannot decide if it is more of the former or the latter) one-peso variety with the quality of newsprint that we used for the gifts of children and babies in our Christmas list and the pricier four-peso ones, made of slippery foil that in retrospect, and I still feel it is so now, were quite difficult to manipulate and handle. There were absolutely no gift boxes for sale; something like that was unheard of in our practical little city. A useless expense, housewives, mothers and sisters would scoff, to purchase a brand-new box to cradle gifts when there were all those perfectly good ones lying around in the house waiting to be put to good use. What for the shoebox, the one that held tissue, powdered milk and cereal, too? Even toothpaste boxes were not spared!

That became the norm: it was neither a reflection of taste nor choice, but very simply the most logical thing to do. I disliked it so much more then than I do now; I always felt it was misleading. Once I unearthed from a cloud of pink froth a heavy Sanrio box that made my heart skip four beats, only for that same skipping heart to flop and break on the fifth. Instead of anything Sanrio (even just a teeny-weeny eraser or a pencil or a pad of stationery!) it was a sorry, ghastly lump of something the function and meaning of which I will never know. Was it a paperweight, a work of art, a weapon, perhaps? Thankfully I do not remember who gave it. I just remember it was the first-ever present that made me want to cry. And if only for that reason I have always been careful about packing gifts; I would not want anyone (a child especially) misled and, consequently, forlornly disappointed.

Mommy, the original packrat, absolutely hated to let anything go to waste and so it was an unspoken rule that wrapping paper and trimmings be saved in three boxes. Even the gift boxes were stacked and saved in bigger boxes. Now going through them was the happiest, most amusing part for me. One box held ribbons of all shapes, colors, sizes and lengths; another box held many years’ worth of stories and Christmas cards from family and friends from places near and far; and yet another held wrapping paper or remnants of it, the creased, torn and otherwise un-reusable parts carefully trimmed with scissors. The gifts that hailed from the bigger cities came in the prettiest paper, the greeting cards from overseas were the most dreamy and glittery, while the ribbons from Rustan’s were the sturdiest and most recognizable.

Gifts that had to be shipped to relatives in Cebu and Manila were not tied with bows. By the time they got to the hands of the intended recipient the general handling would have made it either lopsided, crushed unflatteringly, or loose. Such packages were instead adorned with Christmas flowers that mimicked poinsettias, shaped and cut out piece by piece from red, green, and gold ribbon. Time was when everything was a labor of love, and it is vividly etched in my memory the way Yaya Juling and Yaya Hilda put them together with scotch tape on the backside, upon mommy’s instruction. This they did for every single present that had to travel via land or sea.

Aside from presents we would also make Christmas balls. There would be dozens of Styrofoam orbs, in maybe three sizes, and we would painstakingly glue shimmery, flashy rickrack from Lina’s in three rows, pin sequins topped with tiny beads in the next five, and paste scraps of ribbon and velvet on whatever surface was left unadorned, until a festive ball for the even more festive season smiled and shined upon us.

Once upon a time someone gave us an odd number of miniature boots, supposedly Santa’s, a set of three-dimensional chubby red ones trimmed in black and stuffed in the hollow part with candy canes. No one could say or guess where they could be bought so our wise mommy did the next best thing. After carefully inspecting one piece, she told Junior, our security guard, to fashion dozens of replicas out of newspaper and paint them to be trimmed with black thereafter. Now Junior was always good with his hands: he did the lettering for our school projects, did a lot of the drawing and gluing too, actually, and he was never one to say no to a challenge, especially a creative one. And so he did a beautiful job, nothing less than what was expected of him to begin with, and by the time our tree was up we had Santa’s boots and Junior’s handiwork all around our tree. The candy canes were the only ones that we bought. It was only when I was exposed to books on arts and crafts that I realized what Junior had to rise up to was what we so casually know now as papier-mâché. Back then and there, in our house in Bonifacio Street in Ormoc, most everything was done the long way. There were no short cuts – none that we knew of, none that were readily available, even. Truly, need was the mother of resourcefulness and cleverness.

Mommy says probably the reason why I loved Christmas so is because when she was pregnant with me and already about to give birth she braved her swollen-with-me-inside belly to put up the tree and trim it, wrap the Christmas gifts, send them out in batches, before she finally checked in to the hospital.

There was a time when I was very anal about wrapping gifts; never mind if I was still wrapping well into February, I did not care. The medium was the message, always, and I would not stop until the package was the way I wanted it to be. Now I have become more relaxed, more realistic, and have since happily settled into the folds and facts of compromise. I am thankful for all the fancy paper available, the beautiful gift boxes, the chic and conveniently still-proper paper bags. But in true mommy fashion (I am my mother’s daughter after all) I cannot bear to waste materials and as such have put to good use many things lying around the house (except for shoe, toothpaste, cereal and powdered milk boxes) – some I have saved from the packaging of gifts we have received through the years, many others are incidentals and by-products of daily living – upholstery excess, unfinished odd projects, accessories that are broken or have lost their parts that can still be prettily used as accents. For this season my favorite wrapping material is mahjong paper that Juliana and her cluster of little pink friends have scribbled on with black ink. I suspect their yayas have had their two cents’ worth of input there, too. Bundled with festive green and red bows, they do look pretty, in a very personal, if lopsided, way.

When I started writing this piece my daughter was staring out the window, pining and praying for rain that she could bathe under, but none seemed to be coming. Her daddy has since arrived and has taken the matter into his own hands. Now I have a very wet, very happy duo playing under water coming from a man-made source – the garden hose. As it is in wrapping and playing, and in many other things perchance, necessity, indeed, always will be the mother of invention.

As I watch them I recall, and am very grateful for, the sights and sounds of December. For the mommy who bravely allowed us to create with our little fingers; for Yaya Juling, noisy and happy; and Yaya Hilda, quiet but just as happy, who patiently guided us through the nips and tucks all kinds of ribbons and paper required. I know I was as happy as the ribbon I curled with my bare hands, I remember grating snow out of snow-white scented bath soap, daydreaming and wishing, loving the season so much I could almost touch it.

The seeds of my own Christmas rituals I know were shaped on the big bed in the guestroom of our old house in Bonifacio St. It was in that playground where I first recognized the joy of giving, where I savored the quiet happiness that comes with creating; where I basked in expectancy and thankfulness for the gift of family and friends to share them all with.