I cannot do December. But then again, I cannot not do December.
Year after year after year I tell that to myself, with a feeling of dread at the pit of my stomach knowing I have to face the inevitable: Christmas.
It starts with the countdowns, blahblah days to go before Christmas. Then you hear this dingdongding melody on the radio when Halloween hasn’t even gotten there yet. Then as September becomes October and so on, the next thing you know panic, sets in. Schedules become cramped with reunions and Christmas parties, traffic, year-end deadlines and reports and things you feel you need to get over and done with before the year ends. And I tell myself, I cannot do December and survive with my sanity intact.
Its not my favorite season of the year, obviously. But not to be the grinch for my nieces and nephews, I go along (with much effort) with the ceremonial gift-giving, cooking for the noche buena and media noche pot lucks, going to mass, singing carols and eating more than what I usually eat.
That really isn’t so bad if only the season does not magnify the reality that slaps you in the face everyday.
For an entire year you learn to live with just passing by the candy and yosi vendor; or looking out the jeepney window when a street child wipes your shoes along Quezon Avenue for coins; or not notice the tired face of the cleaning lady at the MRT; ignore the gaping holes on the soles of the slippers of a young boy pushing the trolly along railroad tracks lined with cardboard homes and accept all of these as a part of the f*cking Phillipine society you were born into. It gets frustrating in December. How the hell can you do December? Its different in December.
But it really can be different in December. People seem more charitable, donations pour, telethons for this cause and that institution, concerts for a cause etcetera.
Or is it just the media hype? Because then you see the news.
Vendors who, no different from myself, are trying to beat their deadlines– that of making enough off their wares before the 24th to give their families a decent noche buena– being demolished. All in the name of easing the Christmas traffic.
Then there are the Sumilao farmers who did make the deadline on foot arriving in Manila to ask for land. But then there is the government who wants to beat its own deadline by getting rid of the farmers before Christmas, offering them a ride home along with a stinky land reform deal that supposedly overturns a land-conversion decision to favor Cojuangco’s San Miguel but compels the farmers to still pay for the land.
And then there’s a great December promotion for rapists to go scot free. An honest mistake, Malacanang says, but who trusts Gloria Arroyo enough, believing her to be honest even with mistakes? Phoooey. Ex-Congressman Romeo Jalosjos, convicted rapist of an 11-year old girl is being rewarded by Mrs. Arroyo for his province’ remarkable performance in delivering the votes for her in 2004 and for her senatorial slate in 2007. Honestly no mistake.
And finally you see Mrs. Arroyo kissing the AFP brass ass on their 70th anniversary thanking them for their loyalty, and swearing to high heavens insurgency will be wiped out by 2010. What has been wiped out are communities after communities of peasants. Some have fled and become internal refugees, and some have added to the ranks of the insurgents this regime boasts to get rid of but cultivates instead.
I swear cannot do December. To prove it, I’ve had fever for three straight days and migraine to boot but I am writing this blog with hopes that it will release whatever that needs to be released to survive this season.
It shouldn’t be so bad but doing December has become such an effort especially when the Gloria Grinch makes the lights blink and not glitter. They just blink. And like many of us, pundi na.
