December 2006, 9:40 PM.
I'm seeing snow in the tropics. It's all over me, even on my computer.
Actually, the "snow" refers to the white clumps of fur floating before my eyes in an almost celestial illusion of one of the most common symbols for Christmas. The clumps of hair belong to my grandparents' dog Sam. He has been rubbing his head on my lap for the past five minutes now, wanting to be petted. I don't know how long I can keep on ignoring him but I sure know that I'll go to sleep smelling a lot like dog tonight.
I'm dead tired, having spent the entire day within one centimeter of a hundred or so screaming children jumping around in empty sacks or wrestling with Monobloc chairs. My t-shirt has gotten a tad bit too big for me, having endured incessant pulling from a bunch of five-year olds asking for an extra helping of candy. And now I realize, after glancing at my sleeve, that I do need to take a bath.
One of the children I get to talk to in an almost regular basis is Baby. Her mother used to be one of our household helpers. I remember playing "luksong tinik" with her on our front yard. One night though, she did not come home and I went to sleep wondering why. The next thing I know my sister and I are watching her lug her bag out of the house after she tells us she has decided to elope with her boyfriend who lives down the street. She later gave birth to twins who are both named Sheila. Baby came after the twins and is older sister to two more younger brothers. She is now 9 years old but looks like she's 5. She loves Sugarfree and "Panday" and can memorize the theme song word for word even if she does not speak Tagalog at all. I usually wake up to her singing...no, bellowing that song from the street across our bedroom window in the unholiest of hours (around 6:30 am). I cover my ears with a pillow but shrug off more feelings of amusement than irritation.
Earlier tonight, she related excitedly to me that even if they did not have anything special for Christmas dinner, she was looking forward to New Year because her mother promised to make spaghetti. It was as if she was saying "My Christmas was not perfect but I'm looking forward to something good for the new year."
A perfect Christmas.
Perhaps when we read those words, we usually conjure thoughts similar to those Purefoods Fiesta Ham commercials on TV - misa de gallo, pealing bells, a parol by the window, beautiful dresses, family members all present, food abounding on the table, gifts piled high and a Christmas tree choked up with lights. Everything is so perfect from the pristine white table cloth to the smiles on people's faces. It makes you wonder what happens when someone accidentally elbows a bottle of wine and spills the red liquid on the table.
By TV commercial standards, my Christmases have never been perfect. As a matter of fact, if it were THAT perfect, I would find the entire thing too Willy-Wonka creepy. For 23 years, my Christmases have been punctuated by a lot of kinks and misses - a hard-to-remove stain on a prized table cloth, the ham getting too overcooked to be palatable, someone getting possessed by the Grinch on the night before Christmas, two people giving each other the cold shoulder in probably the coldest time of the year in my country, a relative having a little too much to drink...I could just go on and on. Someone can always manage to, as my sister puts it, single-handedly ruin Christmas in the blink of an eye.
If we allow it.
I'll say that again. If we allow it.
Our overly commercialized, consumer-driven world has gotten it all wrong. Christmas, they say, is about perfection. They pound it into our brains as if we were bipeds with drumsets for heads. Everything has to be perfect, as perfect as say, Marcia Cross's hair in "Desperate Housewives." Nothing could ever go wrong on Christmas Day.
But if we go back to that very first Christmas more than 2000 years ago when the Messiah was born, perfection was wanting. Mary, His mother, was heavy with child and had to travel to Bethlehem with Joseph. When they got to Bethlehem, there was no available room in an inn for them to rest for the night. How dreadfully inconvenient that must have been! I mean, if waiting in line in a cashier's booth for last minute-Christmas shopping is patience-draining, how much more discovering that there are no available rooms for rent when you're having contractions! Upon giving birth to Jesus, Mary then, as the oft-quoted phrase goes, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him, not on a crib, but on a manger. If my childhood Christmas plays were to be believed, the manger would have been stuffed with hay. As a child, I once roamed the ricefields in search of snails and earthworms and when I eventually got tired, I then laid myself down on a haystack. It was not that comfortable and by the time I got up, I had itchy welts all over my legs and arms.
But that picture of Christmas would always be perfect for us just as the nativity sets up for sale in department stores portray. The perfection comes about because we choose to ignore the imperfections and instead settle on the beautiful point that the Christmas story has to offer - love, pure and unconditional love.
It was love that brought Jesus to the world to eventually die for our sins. It was love from our Father for us, His children, who, unlike Him, are desperately wanting of perfection. It was nothing but love, what real love should be, pure and unconditional.
In the same way that an assortment of elements jump around in spandex and pitchforks to stir our Christmas into a major headache, I say it is as perfect as it is, imperfections and all. After all, like I said, only TV commercials for ham are perfect and they need to be, or else you'll end up buying either the rival brand's ham or, worse, chicken hamonado. But what makes me close my eyes and look beyond the imperfection is love. True, the ones you love always hurt you the most but I love my family too much to dwell on what's wrong with them or to focus on what makes them a disappointment sometimes. I love my family despite the mistakes they make and the times they may squash my heart and my toes into nothingness...in the same way that they still love me when I hurt them with the things I may do or say. That is TRUE love, the kind of love we learn from our Heavenly Father, the kind of love that brought salvation to the world, the kind of love that can make the the imperfect perfect.
I'm seeing snow in the tropics. It's all over me, even on my computer.
Actually, the "snow" refers to the white clumps of fur floating before my eyes in an almost celestial illusion of one of the most common symbols for Christmas. The clumps of hair belong to my grandparents' dog Sam. He has been rubbing his head on my lap for the past five minutes now, wanting to be petted. I don't know how long I can keep on ignoring him but I sure know that I'll go to sleep smelling a lot like dog tonight.
I'm dead tired, having spent the entire day within one centimeter of a hundred or so screaming children jumping around in empty sacks or wrestling with Monobloc chairs. My t-shirt has gotten a tad bit too big for me, having endured incessant pulling from a bunch of five-year olds asking for an extra helping of candy. And now I realize, after glancing at my sleeve, that I do need to take a bath.
One of the children I get to talk to in an almost regular basis is Baby. Her mother used to be one of our household helpers. I remember playing "luksong tinik" with her on our front yard. One night though, she did not come home and I went to sleep wondering why. The next thing I know my sister and I are watching her lug her bag out of the house after she tells us she has decided to elope with her boyfriend who lives down the street. She later gave birth to twins who are both named Sheila. Baby came after the twins and is older sister to two more younger brothers. She is now 9 years old but looks like she's 5. She loves Sugarfree and "Panday" and can memorize the theme song word for word even if she does not speak Tagalog at all. I usually wake up to her singing...no, bellowing that song from the street across our bedroom window in the unholiest of hours (around 6:30 am). I cover my ears with a pillow but shrug off more feelings of amusement than irritation.
Earlier tonight, she related excitedly to me that even if they did not have anything special for Christmas dinner, she was looking forward to New Year because her mother promised to make spaghetti. It was as if she was saying "My Christmas was not perfect but I'm looking forward to something good for the new year."
A perfect Christmas.
Perhaps when we read those words, we usually conjure thoughts similar to those Purefoods Fiesta Ham commercials on TV - misa de gallo, pealing bells, a parol by the window, beautiful dresses, family members all present, food abounding on the table, gifts piled high and a Christmas tree choked up with lights. Everything is so perfect from the pristine white table cloth to the smiles on people's faces. It makes you wonder what happens when someone accidentally elbows a bottle of wine and spills the red liquid on the table.
By TV commercial standards, my Christmases have never been perfect. As a matter of fact, if it were THAT perfect, I would find the entire thing too Willy-Wonka creepy. For 23 years, my Christmases have been punctuated by a lot of kinks and misses - a hard-to-remove stain on a prized table cloth, the ham getting too overcooked to be palatable, someone getting possessed by the Grinch on the night before Christmas, two people giving each other the cold shoulder in probably the coldest time of the year in my country, a relative having a little too much to drink...I could just go on and on. Someone can always manage to, as my sister puts it, single-handedly ruin Christmas in the blink of an eye.
If we allow it.
I'll say that again. If we allow it.
Our overly commercialized, consumer-driven world has gotten it all wrong. Christmas, they say, is about perfection. They pound it into our brains as if we were bipeds with drumsets for heads. Everything has to be perfect, as perfect as say, Marcia Cross's hair in "Desperate Housewives." Nothing could ever go wrong on Christmas Day.
But if we go back to that very first Christmas more than 2000 years ago when the Messiah was born, perfection was wanting. Mary, His mother, was heavy with child and had to travel to Bethlehem with Joseph. When they got to Bethlehem, there was no available room in an inn for them to rest for the night. How dreadfully inconvenient that must have been! I mean, if waiting in line in a cashier's booth for last minute-Christmas shopping is patience-draining, how much more discovering that there are no available rooms for rent when you're having contractions! Upon giving birth to Jesus, Mary then, as the oft-quoted phrase goes, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him, not on a crib, but on a manger. If my childhood Christmas plays were to be believed, the manger would have been stuffed with hay. As a child, I once roamed the ricefields in search of snails and earthworms and when I eventually got tired, I then laid myself down on a haystack. It was not that comfortable and by the time I got up, I had itchy welts all over my legs and arms.
But that picture of Christmas would always be perfect for us just as the nativity sets up for sale in department stores portray. The perfection comes about because we choose to ignore the imperfections and instead settle on the beautiful point that the Christmas story has to offer - love, pure and unconditional love.
It was love that brought Jesus to the world to eventually die for our sins. It was love from our Father for us, His children, who, unlike Him, are desperately wanting of perfection. It was nothing but love, what real love should be, pure and unconditional.
In the same way that an assortment of elements jump around in spandex and pitchforks to stir our Christmas into a major headache, I say it is as perfect as it is, imperfections and all. After all, like I said, only TV commercials for ham are perfect and they need to be, or else you'll end up buying either the rival brand's ham or, worse, chicken hamonado. But what makes me close my eyes and look beyond the imperfection is love. True, the ones you love always hurt you the most but I love my family too much to dwell on what's wrong with them or to focus on what makes them a disappointment sometimes. I love my family despite the mistakes they make and the times they may squash my heart and my toes into nothingness...in the same way that they still love me when I hurt them with the things I may do or say. That is TRUE love, the kind of love we learn from our Heavenly Father, the kind of love that brought salvation to the world, the kind of love that can make the the imperfect perfect.
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