“ONCE AGAIN, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.”
So an anonymous wit famously, and so-rightly, says.
Amen, amen, the least of the purchase ye did at the malls, the least of the Christmas spirit in thee! Hail SM City! Hallelujah Marquee Mall! Hossana Robinsons Starmills!
And sophomoric me could only write, not so long ago, in unpoetic un-verse:
Pasko’y nasa SM, Galleria’t Tutuban,
Greenhills at Landmark, Greenbelt, ‘tsaka Rustan
Hugos ang bilihan, wala nang baratan
makakuha lamang ng mithing laruan,
mamahaling damit, pati kasangkapan.
Himig nitong Pasko ay Lacoste at Giordano.
dili kaya’s Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Benetton,
Larawan ng Pasko wala na kay Kristo,
ito’y nasa Prada, Bally, Esprit, Polo,
Fendi, Tommy, Hugo pati Ferregamo.
Ito nga ang diwa nitong ating Pasko –
para sa mayaman, kaburgisang totoo.
Political overtones there but not bereft of social values. So unlike the sheer, if not shameful, politicization of Christmas in the City of San Fernando with those Aquino-ribbon shaped red-blue-yellow lanterns along its main avenue.
That – and GMA’s request to be home-from-jail on Christmas Day – notwithstanding, Christmas remains more commercialized than politicised.
“I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls;
that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness.” – Julia Peterkin, A Plantation Christmas, 1934.
Holiday most tedious, indeed, has become of Christmas, ruled as it is by economics. Its message of salvation, of God come down to man, lost in the shopping frenzy.
“From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.” So Katharine Whitehorn paraphrased Voltaire’s own take on the necessity of God.
So Santa’s been delisted from the Holy Church’s Calendar of Saints. Yet belief in him persisted, nay, twisted for purely commercial purposes. See Santa gulping cola or sipping coffee. Santa calling in his elves via mobile.
Then there is Santa’s jolly visage appended to just about anything hawked this season, from cards to blinking lights, to hams, sausages and bacon.
So who gets it all in the end?
“The Christmas season has come to mean the period when the public plays Santa Claus to the merchants.” So right is John Andrew Holmes there.
“Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer…. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?”
Indeed, Bill Watterson of Calvin & Hobbes, who’d ever guess that the spirituality of Christmas could spark so much compulsive consumption as to drive the very engine of capitalism?
And we still wonder why at the end of the season we all feel spent? Read on and wonder no more.
“I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.
And thus I drift along into the holidays – let them overtake me unexpectedly – waking up some find morning and suddenly saying to myself: “Why, this is Christmas Day!” Nugget of wisdom from David Grayson there.
Truly baffling no end the character who stole Christmas. Thus, Dr. Seuss: “And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons.
It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
Indeed, Christmas means much, much more:
“Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant’s trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer’s martyrdom.”
Like Madeline Morse, let us make the Christ happen in this season’s celebration as well as in our lives day-to-day.
