From
my sleep on your grandparents’ bed which your Aunt Miner has caused to be fixed
and lacquered anew, I woke up to a cold and rainy Christmas morning like the
ones I remember from when I was a boy.
With Christmas mornings in Buhi like this, I recall your grandfather
saying that our hometown is probably situated right under the Gods’ shower
room. This year I did the grocery
shopping with your Uncle Alvin at the Gaisano Mall in Legaspi and bought Yellow
Cab 18” pizzas in Naga. While your
Auntie Marivic brought cake and boxes of fruits, your Uncle Junior did most of
the cooking, a chore that has been his lot these Christmases past. Your Lola Telia whom we requested to whip up
her signature leche flan did the Christmas tree and the garland that decorated
the stairs.
When
we were children, Christmas was something we all looked forward to beginning
September – the start of the “ber” months.
Back then, the gradual change in the weather, the added bite in the air
that follow the monsoon rains, contributed to putting one in a holiday
mood. For your grandmother, September
marked the gradual accretion of Christmas items on top of her monthly grocery
purchases in Naga. Gradually, the dining
room shelves which doubled as pantry got stocked with boxes of pasta, tomato
sauces, pickles, mayonnaise, baking flour and powder as well as cans of whipped
cream, fruit cocktail and pineapple chunks.
For
our Christmas stockings, your grandmother would also start buying toys and
chocolates on the sly. She would keep them
under lock and key in her cabinet, alongside the apples, chocolates and boxes
of raisins she bought around the third week of December. Not as readily available as they are now,
apples were extra-special treats which we associated with Christmas back
then. As a boy, I used to sniff their
divine scent through your grandmother’s cabinet and imagine my first juicy bite
of the fruit come Christmas morn. So
special were apples my childhood friends and I used to dream of going to America
and working as apple pickers, not so much for foreign currency earnings as for
abundant access to the fruit to our hearts’ content.
Your
grandmother was not one for store bought Christmas decorations, so your Auntie
Marivic and Eva were very creative at making them from scratch. Our Christmas trees were usually a clump of
dried branches gathered into a pot and decorated with Christmas balls and
cards, tinsel and tufts of cotton as snow.
More than the Christmas tree, however, special attention was given to
our creche or belen which, through the years, my sisters assembled with old
table tennis balls, thread cones, Japanese and art papers as well as glue and
thumb tacks.
Santa
Claus’ surreptitious visit was a yearly tradition that promised stocking treats
for everyone, from your great grandmother Petra, to our Aunts, to our brood of
seven and our maids. Family lore has it
that our Aunt Aida believed in Father Christmas well into adulthood. Your grandfathers’ socks – the biggest in the
house – came in handy and were hung on the balustrade of our old house. As children, we all waited for Santa Claus’
incursion into the household up until the wee hours when we would inevitably
succumb to sleep. On Christmas morning,
we would rush from our beds to find our allotted socks stuffed with an apple, a
box of raisins, candies and chocolate that came in bars and rugby ball shape. A
midrib usually accompanied these treats for us who were supposed to have landed
on Santa Claus’ naughty list.
While
your mother usually gifted us boys with a harmonica, from our uncle, Pay Antoy,
came the toy guns, trumpets, drums and the dolls for the girls. Christmas mornings were spent enjoying our
treats and playing with our toys. What
pocket money we received – usually P1.00, a princely sum then – were usually
handed over to your grandmother for safekeeping.
One
Christmas, your Lola Telia made hams out of two pork hind legs which we
consumed well into February. I once
volunteered to cook the pasta and spoiled everyone’s appetite with overcooked
mush not even Tiyo Bildo, our rice mill machinist, could be prevailed upon to
consume. Ever precocious as a young boy,
your Uncle Alvin used to make exploding bomb sounds every time someone played
Nat King Cole’s “O Tannembaum” on our stereo.
In our teens, we went our separate ways attending the Misa de Gallo with
our friends and returning home to partake the family’s Noche Buena. These became very festive when your Aunt
Marivic started working and, once and for all, assumed the role of Santa Claus
for everyone.
