Putting the X in Xmas

Here’s another Christmas article for you. I began writing this article with much hope of exuding that pine-scented Christmas greeting of warm thoughts and happy memories. However, all that went through my head was how modern times have more or less thinned the yuletide spirit.

I remember my first brush with Christmas disaster. At the young age of six I got into a fight with my cousin and brother. Using verbal daggers against my brattiness, they told me that Santa was just mom and dad and that my toys did not come from the North Pole but from SM! I cried because my childhood was ruined by these vile urchins who were supposedly related to me. I went on for a couple of years pretending that I still believed in Santa, writing him letters and reading them aloud, so that mom and dad would know and get me what I wanted. I even wrote down where to get it. Naturally, my parents grew wary of this thinly veiled charade and my final stocking stuffer was a five-hundred-peso bill.

It was downhill from there. I started seeing that Christmas was truly gone when we started guzzling eggnog from a carton and listening to carols with a Discman or boom box. We started having florists do our tree, of course in a very nouveau way. When I started getting money for Christmas, I knew it was all over. It was my 13th month pay as my parent’s daughter/underaged slave.

Gone were the days when I thought the song I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus was about adultery, and that you had to unwrap gifts carefully so you’ll have good luck. A weary hello to a Christmas list that surpassed my bank account, Christmas parties that I was too hung over to attend and yup, the embarrassing practice of recycling gifts.

I was once caught doing a recycle. I didn’t even change the wrapper and gave the gift to a friend who turned out to be the gift giver in the first place. Yes, that was how indolent I was! I appreciate people who give generic gifts like candles, food and cake. It takes the effort out of recycling. As these pastries, I surmise, do their trip around Jerusalem in different houses, my bank account can breathe a little as I do a selfish splurge like buy shoes that I will never wear. I swear there should be a website on the six degrees of separation between every fruitcake rotated in Manila. I don’t know anyone who eats that brick of shit. I tried it once and in my humble opinion, that lump is better off as a paperweight or a doorstop.

Another annoying thing about Christmas is how people bastardize Simbang Gabi. For starters I am not religious, but I do respect religion. Some people go to church drunk or stay outside to smoke. Excuse me, if I have a stick up my ass but that is just so not happening. I once accompanied a friend to Simbang Gabi and I couldn’t swallow what I saw. People texting, talking, still wearing halter tops worn from some party that probably ended an hour ago and people scamming on each other in church! Suddenly, I didn’t feel that bad about recycling gifts.

Slutty Scrooges and horny red-nosed Rudolphs — are they enough to ruin Christmas forever?

One day after work, I drove down Manila Bay and saw street lights all heated up with Christmas fever. The plaza looked amazing as parol (sans corporate logos) decorated the trees. I felt like a child again. For some reason my heart warmed and I started craving for chestnuts. I heard street children singing and I realized how jaded I had become. I was Scroogier than the bastards at Simbang Gabi.

The packaging may change year after year, but the spirit of Christmas lies within you. The more you attach yourself to deteriorating values, the more likely you are to succumb to Grinchland. So say bah-humbug to all Scrooges and check in at Grump rehab.

Me? I decided to take things in my own hands — I turned left to Malate and bought bottles of Absinthe for my loved ones. I decided not to recycle this year. After all, this is the season to be merry.