LITERARY GREATS seem to have an uncannily prescient, if sometimes bleak, glimpse of the future.
For example, the land of Narnia, in C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, was cursed by the White Witch so that it always had winter but no Christmas. Could there be a more inhospitable world?
But Lewis’ imaginative prose has become prophetic truth for the world nearly 100 years after, or much of it anyway, where there had been record-setting snowfalls, but no Christmas. Even Santa Claus, so a timely joke goes, is said to have suffered from immobilizing arthritic limbs as a result of off-the-chart frigid clime.
In our time, the brutal and bruising pandemic has become the metaphorical winter of our discontent. The overwhelming coldness, official and otherwise, has been made worse by the lack of warmth or heart, mostly official, that has figuratively frozen many people with the unbearable lockdowns in all sizes, shapes and forms. Authoritarianism is cold ideology, in season or out.
We’re all battle-scarred, as it were, by the ‘war’ against the virus plague, one way or another. It’s been a period when, as the Nobel Prize author John Steinbeck saw it, to be alive at all is to have scars. There were brave attempts to cushion the colossal disaster through local inventiveness such as the community pantry. But the initial enthusiasm that spread like wildfire all over was rudely and comically stymied by cynical minds. It was deemed a subversive idea, as opposed to the much-ballyhoed ‘ayudas’ that were far and few between, if not empty promises.
But there is hope, brightly beckoning in the horizon, like energizing beams from heaven. The viral infection has steadily been going down. The curve hasn’t been flattened yet. But it seems headed that way, attaining zero-value, ultimately . Some places in the country have reported these minor miracles. Are we aware, like Lewis, who is in the details?
It’s time for the big picture.
To begin with, we can now look forward to Christmas circa 2021, marking it like the beginning of a new age. We can celebrate it preciously the way we hadn’t in the last two years or so. We may go back to a time to reclaim an enviable stature in the Christian world: the longest Christmas season. The lanterns are our emblem of hope.
Traditional caroling is now allowed in those areas under Alert Level 2, subject to strictly following health and safety protocols. Good luck or good night. On Christmas Day, kids, too, or those vaccinated already, will be unshackled, subject to IATF or LGU guidelines, to say hello to ‘long lost’ relatives and godparents. No doubt, they can’t wait to have those face-to-face classes resumed ASAP. In short, normal, or most of it, may be back soon. So will monstrous traffic be, a modern curse but a sure of sign progress, according to a former mayor.
The best part of it all is that we can all look forward even farther to 2022, especially because of the presidential and local elections. After all the epochal mismanagement by this administration, which on record is to blame for the Philippines’ dismal — worst?– performance versus the virus, the nation may be in the best mood for the cruelest revenge, per Steinbeck: forgetting or forgiving. All because Christmas is shaping up to be back in business again in earnest. To everybody’s grateful heart’s content.
In fact, the prospect of a merry Christmas this year may already rule out the Filipinos throwing Duterte under the bus if the International Criminal Court finds him guilty as charged of committing crimes against humanity in his war against drugs. He may not be the ‘charming gardener that made our souls blossom’, but he concededly took out some wicked weeds in the garden, along with some good roses, regrettably. He may be an SOB, as the saying goes, but he is our SOB.
Duterte understands many Filipinos better, in that sense, when he declared recently that he would rather be tried in Philippine courts than in foreign ones for his perceived crimes. Patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel has never sounded as real and as reasonable.
‘The higher road ,and apt for the season of lights, is leaving what’s past behind. The right sentiment should not be decisive. The right decision this time around is, six years after the reign of the small-town despot. The country deserves a much-needed break . The right leader(s) who will lead the nation to better times after the pandemic and the unholy cabal of purveyors of undemocratic ideology should get the chance. The gang of four supporting the son and daughter of past and present dictators poses a litmus test to the nation’s political sanity.
Like it or not, Christmas 2021 already raises expectations. Expectations prepare the ground for more ‘miracles’. We have to manage those expectations, to be sure. There is the risk,or a threat, of a new variant, Omicron. It’s not only the ‘cron’, though. Incoming cronies, too. Corruption may be locked up in the future Cabinet. The bottom line: there is a vital future pleading to be rescued.
The combined lessons of the pandemic and the Duterte administration’s flaws and failures should fairly gird the nation for what lies ahead. Prepare to celebrate what could be the best Christmas ever after the two-year drought; just don’t let the Grinch or the White Witch to steal it.
