MY PERSONAL REFLECTIONS THIS CHRISTMAS

 

Dear ATABAY Readers, this is my last article for this year. By the grace of God, I look forward to writing my next article come January of the New Year 2022.

In my writing finale, I would like to seize this rare occasion to pay tribute to two notable persons in my life: my father and my mother, and to pay homage to our birthday celebrant this Christmas: Jesus.

FATHER

Nowadays, amid the pandemic, each time we hear or read the words “shortness of breath” we know full well what those grim words imply. Personally, there’s more to those words than meets the eye.

Looking back, six decades ago, our two-floor ancestral house, designed by my father, a mechanic, was typical: a dining area, a storeroom, & a “dirty kitchen” on the ground floor, while on the second floor, a receiving area & two bedrooms. Just as “dirty kitchen” was the exact term because our kitchen looked “dirty” (due to soot and smokes brought about by burning firewood), so too, “ground floor,” because we stepped on earth’s real surface – the un-concreted ground.

The most unique feature of our house amazed me -- the main door to the second floor -- it was horizontal. A visitor would first come up a steep wooden stair and then knock on the horizontal door. Someone on the second floor would pull the horizontal door up and fix it on a special hook. The set-up was tricky and dangerous. Thankfully, not a single accident took place during our whole stay in that house – except for one incident I couldn’t forget.

One day, I was going down the stairs rashly when I slipped and lost my balance. I fell and heard a thud sound – my chest hit the ground hard. It was not just “shortness of breath,” I felt, but I could hardly breathe. I panicked. All of a sudden, I felt two strong hands pick me up like a pillow and massage intensely my breast. I saw my father’s face – cool but concerned. A few minutes later, I found myself breathing again normally and felt relieved.

Right after that incident, I could still recall my father, known to many for his “precious and few” words, said nothing at all. He just smiled at me – a cool and quiet persona he projected in our family, characterized by the lyrics of a song:

“The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me whenever I fall

You say it best when you say nothing at all.”

MOTHER

My mother was a dressmaker and she turned me into one of the best-dressed students on a college campus. The 70s fad: Golden Award short sleeve polo shirt, tucked in Levi’s maong pants, fitted with Hickok belt and buckle, and matched up well with brown cowboy leather boots. Golden Award shirts were limited to large, medium, and small standard sizes. Only when you exactly fit the standard size would you be looking great; otherwise, you’d get a tucking-in hassle every day. Some friends wondered where I had bought my Golden Award shirts. Never would they know my secret: my mother remodeled a stack of my Golden Award shirts in a variety of colors and stripes to fit me perfectly.

After college, I got my first job and sent money to my mother during paydays. When I took the plunge to settle down, I cut off my monthly remittance. One day, I took vacation leave and got home. In one unguarded moment, my mother mentioned to me in passing my cutting off the remittance. Deep inside me, I was upset – with myself. I didn’t realize the small amount had mattered so much to her.

Sensing my ruffled reaction, she calmly said in the local dialect, “Don’t get upset. It just feels good each time I receive something from my successful children.”

I love to cook. Today, how I wish I could cook for my mother a pinakbet -- one of her favorite food. To top off our Christmas Noche Buena, how I wish I could grill for her baby back ribs -- one food she never tasted owing to her life’s hardship. Each moment I look at my happy family, our modest house, our ten-year-old car in the garage – how I wish my mother were still around to see her smile.

JESUS

Many years ago, a few days after Christmas, someone knocked at the gate of our house. A kid who did menial jobs around our house in the past asked me if I had any job for him to do that day. Nothing needful at all, really, so I just told him to cut the tall bushes in an adjacent vacant lot. Just before noontime, after more than three hours of tough cutting work, he came up sweating, gasping for breaths, looking starved, and telling me he had already got through the job. I paid him and served him a snack – Christmas leftovers – a huge chunk of cake, an apple, a native dessert, and a glass of pineapple juice.

Just then, he said in the local dialect, “I’m not yet hungry. Can I bring this home?”

In no time at all, he was gone. I was left reflecting on what I had just gone through. I knew full well he’s starved. The selfless act of taking home and sharing his little food with her family at home pierced my heart like a two-edged sword on my perception of the poor.

God loves the poor. That’s why Jesus was born through a poor family in a manger.

The Covid-19 Omicron variant “is going to take over” the US winter season and very likely “to increase Europe’s death toll” according to the latest update. In PH, the Omicron variant’s advent was preempted by Typhoon Odette that left behind over two hundred lives lost and vast destruction.

More than five million seats will be empty at the dinner tables around the world come Christmas. What can we say to those families who lost one or more loved ones to Covid-19 or a natural disaster?  Amid the traumatic suffering, do they even know it’s Christmas? This last question inspired the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” written in 1984 in reaction to the Ethiopia famine. Its soul-stirring message is very relevant today.

“It’s Christmas time

There’s no need to be afraid

At Christmas time

We let light and we banish shade

And in our world of plenty

We can spread a smile of joy

Throw your arms around the world

At Christmas time

But say a prayer

Pray for the other ones

At Christmas time it’s hard

But when you’re having fun

There’s a world outside your window

And it’s a world of dread and fear

Where the only water flowing

Is the bitter sting of tears

And the Christmas bells that ring there

Are the clanging chimes of doom

Well tonight we're reaching out

Instead to you.

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time

The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life

Where nothing ever grows, no rain or river flows

Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?"

I would like to conclude my last article this year on a high note with “my idea of a perfect Christmas” as Jose Mari Chan’s line goes. Looking at the essence of Christmas today through Dr. Stephen Covey’s proactive way, we should create within us internal conditions of joy which external circumstances cannot affect. Hence, we should carry our weather around with us anytime, anyplace, and with anyone. This hopeful line of the Christmas song says it all: “May the spirit of Christmas be always in our hearts.”

            A Blessed Christmas To Everyone!