Memories of Christmas Past
Saturday, December 17th, 2005
Yes it’s Christmas time; and whether I like it or not, a myriad memories about this special holiday in the past keeps on flooding my thoughts. Whenever I see a belen, I remember an itchy clothing and eating Nips. Staring a Christmas tree for so long, I remember a burning thing. Hearing children in the streets singing Christmas carols, I remember myself crying for justice and a tambourine made of tansan. Smelling a roasted chicken, I remember eating on a wooden floor. Meeting a Santa Claus mascot, I remember imagining a woman with a beard. Cliffhanger? Then allow me to share these tales…
My earliest memory of Christmas perhaps was my participation in a Christmas pageant. I was five and my kindergarten school had this annual play recounting how little Jesus came to earth. The good thing was that, I knew by that age that Jesus was born in a manger with the lambs and donkeys. The bad thing was, I suffered the allergies caused by that itchy clothing my mother made for me out of recycled linens. Argh! Of course I was a shepherd and that’s why seeing a belen makes me recall that helluva costume.
Not only the allergies enter my mind upon seeing a belen but also the coated chocolate Nips. In my time, when M&Ms was not that famous yet, my tongue favored the local Nips. Every Christmas, my father bought me and my sister packs of the sweet equally divided. By then I was a glutton so my share would all be consumed first. Envying my sister lusciously savoring hers, an evil plan came in my mind. We had this pop-up belen at home made of carton and I told my sister that If I talked to Jesus in it, He would transform my colored Nips into black ones which were sweeter. My tricked sister gave me some of her Nips for me to make them black. My modus operandi: I ate the colored coatings of Nips and gave back to my sister the remaining chocolate with which she was so amazed. So gross but at least I got a bigger share. Haha.
When I was around seven years old, my mother happened to make a unique Christmas tree out of yarn and cotton. She spent much for such project and it was so beautiful. Its beauty lured me however to pyromania. It was brown out one evening and with a matchbox in my hands, I curiously lit a piece of cotton on the Christmas tree. The combustion was fast and before I knew it, everything was ash and my mother was ready to strike her belt. Seeing Christmas trees nowadays, I get flashbacks of that burning thing – Mom’s Christmas tree itself.
I love hearing children singing Christmas carols. Though it may sound a bit corny, hearing, “Tenkyu, tenkyu, ang babait ninyo tenkyu!,” seems pleasing to me. But a sad memory about caroling shall forever haunt me. It was one Christmas evening and all the children in our neighborhood were going from home to home singing Christmas songs to gain some coins. Majority of these children I say were from families of low socioeconomic status. My father encouraged me to join caroling and he made me an improvised tambourine out of tansan and wires. I sang with the other children and though I couldn’t tolerate the cold of the night going from home to home, I tried to get along. But my sacrificed wasn’t paid. The leader of the carolers who was a monster of a bully told me after the caroling, “Sa amin na lang yung share mo, marami naman kayong pera eh.” I got nothing that night, the reason why I will always remember crying over an unfair decision.
The scent of roasted chicken in the Noche Buena table has always a great effect in me. Not that it makes my mouth watery, not that I lust the drumstick part, not even that I crave for its reddish skin with towering cholesterol. The roasted chicken reminds me of that sad Christmas when my family was so down. My father’s business wasn’t productive that time and my mother’s salary in teaching profession was delayed. In short, we got no money for Christmas. It was Christmas eve and father went somewhere else to get us something for the Noche Buena. Late in the evening he had not arrived and we were a worried at home.
We got a two-storey house and my sister and I were staying in the second floor. The rooms were being developed that time so we were sleeping in the wooden floor covered with mat. That Christmas eve, the both of us couldn’t sleep. We were looking at the gate outside through the window hoping to see father arriving. I was about to cry seeing the clock at 10:00 pm and father had not come yet. “Di bale walang Noche Buena, basta nandito si Papa at kumpleto kami,” I thought. Around 11:30, we saw someone entering the gate, and we knew who it was! Father brought home only one roasted chicken for all the stores had ran out after he acquired money from a friend. But it was enough. At the strike of 12 midnight, the whole family was eating the roasted chicken in the wooden floor at the second floor of the house – in kinamay style.
I was a victim of the so-called Santa Claus lore. I was lucky enough though to discover the real identity of this Santa Claus person earlier in my childhood. A lot of questions were disturbing me. Did he really see me when I was sleeping? Did he know when I was or was not awake? Did he really know that I had been bad or good? Well, when I finally encountered Santa Claus, I was grammatically corrected. He was a ‘she’ and none other than my beloved mother. I caught her one evening having difficulty of fitting the gifts she wrapped to my little socks hanged in the stairs. I hid of course, trying not to spoil the mystery. She was wearing a night gown and not that red shining costume with matching pointed cap tipped by a white ball. She had no curly white beard but I was imagining the next day, “What if she had?”. Haha.
So many memories with past Christmases I have other than the things I shared; such that this article will not suffice. And I know other people have their own joyous and sad experiences with the holiday too. It’s just that Christmas is Christmas and it’s a big deal of an event happening once in every year. Our Savior none other than Jesus Christ is being reborn in our hearts, cleansing our negatives, giving hope, promising an everlasting joy. Indeed, memories of Christmas will forever instill in us when we believe in the magic of it.
