The stressful Christmas that was

That was one long Christmas season – ending only last Sunday, the Feast of the Epiphany.

One thing I noticed about this most recent Christmas past was that it was austere. If you noticed, even the style of Christmas trees that came out of department stores this year proved to be a lot slimmer (particularly the bottom area) compared to the bulky plastic trees of the past. I guess that was in keeping with the times – the hard times. Well, we keep saying year after year that it is going to be a difficult Christmas for all of us. But somehow we survive each year. But with this last one, we barely made it.

Oh, but there was still a lot of food – as gifts and even in those endless Christmas parties.

One Christmas party that I always look forward to is the one we hold for ourselves in the Cinema Evaluation Board (CEB). It is just a simple get-together (usually held after our marathon screenings) where we go potluck and eat and chat at the waiting room of My Cinema in Greenbelt.

This year, Marrot Moreno prepared a whole bilao of siopao enough to feed the whole of Makati – Viejo and Nuevo. Digna Santiago came in with her dulong dip with crackers. Christine Dayrit brought salad and turonitos with three different sauces. Bernadette Paterno came in with two whole cakes, while the rest brought wine.

The one dish we look forward to at these CEB parties, however, is Marissa Floirendo’s sinfully-delicious crispy lechon kawali, which is really to die for. Yeah, you can really end up dead (of a massive heart attack) after eating so much of it. But I swear it’s worth a thousand deaths.

My holiday binging actually began early – on my birthday (Dec. 9) – when I got a lot of food as presents. Mrs. Corazon Samaniego, who still runs the annual Box-Office King and Queen awards, as usual, sent me a whole box of polvoron covered in brown and white chocolate (you can just imagine all the sugar it has).

From my Startalk co-host Joey de Leon, I got a whole Bizu cake and macaroons – all of which I finished just by myself.

And while in the middle of an anticipated misa de gallo, I got a text message from Helen Gamboa asking me to choose between leche flan and baked macaroni. Well, the pasta kid that I am, I chose baked macaroni without thinking twice and she promptly sent it to my house the following day. One thing you can say about Helen, she’s not only a great actress and singer she is also great in the kitchen – a fact I’ve kown these many years because it was this French-Pampangueña who taught me how to eat buro with mustard leaves.

During this entire Christmas season, I don’t remember ever buying dessert for the house because people just kept sending me cakes and pies. From Diana Zubiri, I got this most delicious banana mousse pie, which I served in a party and was a hit – and from Juliana Palermo, the only healthy food I ate during the holidays: 12 ponkan oranges.

Christmas is over now – at last! So how do I assess it? It was a painful one because it really hurt the pocket – the prices of commodities having gone up, as in way up.

Christmas shopping for me, however, wasn’t as stressful because I began buying gifts as early as March of 2005. But believe it or not, I still have to buy gift items for about 10 more people this week. Well, that should be a breeze and wouldn’t take me a whole afternoon at Rustan’s.

What almost killed me during the holiday season was – you guessed it right – traffic. And it didn’t help that the MMDA kept rearranging those fences every day – in front of SM Megamall, at the corner of EDSA-Annapolis, etc.

Well, with Christmas over, I hope everything goes back to normal. That may take some time for me, however, because I’m still nursing this fever that I kept postponing all throughout the holidays.

It’s stress fever – I’d like to call it that. And I’m not only the one who has that because I know of a lot of other people who are also sick these days.

For all that nourishment we had during the holidays, we still ended up sick because we weren’t resting enough (blame it on the staying up late at parties and get-togethers and the fact that we had to get up earlier than usual because of traffic). And then there’s this weird weather that weighs down the pollution of Metro Manila and this I believe is aggravating the situation. And so I have a bad cold, am coughing badly and constantly running a temperature.

But I will get over this. I will survive it the way I survived the holiday season. I’m not sure, however, how many more stressful Christmases I can take in the future.