Christmas Memories

When I was younger, Christ­mas started quite early. I remem­ber my mom would start shop­ping for Christ­mas presents as early as Octo­ber. She also bought parols* from the City Jail. These parols were made by inmates of the jail as their addi­tional source of income.

We used to live near the jail, and I remem­ber that when I was grow­ing up, my friends and I would watch the inmates con­struct these beau­ti­ful parols. We would stand—a flimsy chicken wire sep­a­rat­ing us from the inmates— in awe and wide-eyed won­der at how these sup­posed crim­i­nals could make some­thing so beau­ti­ful with their hands.

The fam­ily would go to the Parish Chapel to hear Christ­mas eve mass. After mass, we would go home, gather around the table, and start eat­ing our Noche Buena of Cagayan de Oro ham (the orig­i­nal Pines brand), queso de bola, sotang­hon (chi­nese noo­dles cooked pina­mala – the soup drained), home-made corned beef and broiled chicken. Chicken fat left on the turbo broiler is placed on rice to become an added treat in itself. These were our usual Noche Buena fare. Addi­tional food varies– one year we had pressure-cooked ban­gus in olive oil; another year we had a whole lechon (roast pig)–but we had lechon pak­siw for a whole week so we never tried that again…; another year mama decided to go “long-life” with pancit can­ton and bam-i (pancit and sotang­hon noo­dles mixed), aside from the sotanghon.

At exactly 12 mid­night, the whole fam­ily would pause, and start shar­ing about the biggest joys of their year. Since there were only four of us (dad, mama, me and joan, my sis­ter), we would usu­ally fin­ish by 12:30. When we got older though, the shar­ings started to go longer and longer (prob­a­bly because we had a lot more to thank God for…).

This year was quite dif­fer­ent. We didn’t have parols any­more. The only reminder of Christ­mas in our house was the Christ­mas Wreath in the liv­ing room and the Christ­mas tree in the garage. I later learned that the inmates in the city jail have stopped mak­ing parols. We didn’t go to our old Parish church, the fam­ily are now reg­u­lars of the Ate­neo de Cagayan-Xavier Uni­ver­sity chapel. This year, I cooked steak (my own recipe), mama cooked hamon­ado (pork leg stew) and my aunt cooked calamari.

It was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, but at the same time, it was the same. Gone were the child­hood mem­o­ries of parols and broiled chicken with its deli­cious lard. But Christ­mas was Christ­mas, still. The essence of my spend­ing the two weeks in Cagayan de Oro was the time spent with the family.

I even got to visit my lola in our small home­town. She prob­a­bly no longer rec­og­nizes me (she’s had mem­ory prob­lems over the past year), but we got to walk around the home­town (in the guise of “exer­cise”), and stopped by the Parish Church. She prayed to the child Jesus in the make-shift manger in the altar of the Church. She knelt down fer­vently in front of the child, and I was afraid her frail body would give way and she wouldn’t be able to stand up; but she some­how found the strength to kneel down and pray.

Her pray­ing got me think­ing about what Christ­mas really is all about. In the end, we’d all prob­a­bly for­get the “tra­di­tions” in our fam­i­lies. My lola prob­a­bly never missed a Christ­mas mass for the past eighty or so years until she missed the Christ­mas eve mass this year. When she was younger, she prob­a­bly had all the trim­mings of Christ­mas– the parols and the singing and the great food and com­pany. But in the end, they’re really just that–trim­mings.

In the end, it’s all about that Child in the manger. It’s about bring­ing our bodies–frail or strong; weak or capable–and kneel­ing down in front of that Child. And whis­per­ing our prayers.

Every­thing else is really just trim­ming com­pared to that.

*parols are star-shaped lanterns that is tra­di­tional dec­o­ra­tion for Fil­ipino Christmases.