A Hometown Christmas

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.