DENY IT or not, under the skin, we’re all just hopelessly true-blue pinoy families and children at heart. Come evenings, if one happened to walk past houses lining any road, chances are you would be catching glimpses of tiny Christmas lights already peeping out the windows.
Our secret’s already out for the world to see; everyone has been itching to put up Christmas decorations since the beginning of September, not to mention playing Christmas songs over the airwaves and shopping malls. It’s either Jose Mari’s song must really be that good or it’s just us, Filipinos always aching for “ber” months so we could finally start celebrating.
This household is no exception. The meme “Are we there yet?” sounds eerily like a squeaky undertone to my partner’s everyday query of “When are we putting up the decorations?” As is always the usual, I’m just cool with it all as I tease, “Just you wait, let’s wait for November 25…”
Eventually, we settled for one of those plain 24-hour solar-powered tiny lights (the serious lights we’ll put up later). I then masterfully snaked the thin strands along the front window grills to form a tree and voila! Our momentary standoff with the prospect of having a full display of Christmas trimmings in September. Even at this simple display, the neighbors must already be humming “Wake me up when this month ends…”
Alas, the months of September and October blew past so quickly and the threat of the matey’s yearning for yuletide adornment was once again knocking incessantly at my ears’ entrance. Evidently, just after All-Souls’ Day, I opened the front door to be met with the sight of a neat pile of plastic poinsettias lying on a chair nearby, along with last year’s Christmas laurels and some silver bells. Suffice to say, the Christmas balls were now in my court.
However, there were still so many chores to be done… starting with the elections, requiring travel to Gensan, shorter trips downtown, observing November one and two, and then some more. The decorations that the mum had put out still lay unattended near our door.
Through it all, every time we thought about setting them up in come early evenings, we were already tired by then so, they are still out there. I am even guessing that any passer-by or curious onlooker might think, maybe this year, we were attempting to come up with the concept of the ultimate cluttered Christmas decoration, with specific instructions: just leave them where they fall, and that’s it!
Then, as fate would have it, and just like in the children’s fable of the ants and the grasshopper, the rains came. I came out during the first downpour and getting a little wet, I retreated. I’ll wait for the morning sun to dry them up a bit.
