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Thursday, January 08, 2004
Cogvington: Punch bowl
By Gary Covington
COMMENTARY
Thank the stars. There goes another Christmas, over and done with for another year.
Christmas is the time when the basura truck turns from a once a month visitor into a twice a week nuisance. It multiplies too; from a single ten-wheeler into a squadron of three which take it in turn to hold the neighborhood to ransom: pinaskohan or the trash gets left in the street to rot.
Christmas is the time for parties. Customer client bashes, office celebrations, barkada reunions, all occasions for the customary exchange of gifts.
Christmas time is when department stores boost their prices for a week or two all the better to generously mark them down by up to 50 percent on selected items at the January sales. And food halls feel obliged to offer “traditional” festive treats such as rich fruit cake, oddly shaped hams and keso de bola, an imitation Dutch cheese.
Christmas time means simbang gabi, the annual clash between those who do and those who don’t. Half the household rises at five thirty in the morning. The other half pretend to slumber on but in reality are cursing the switched on lights, the slamming doors, the chatter and yapping dogs, a routine repeated an hour or so later when the churchgoers return.
And for the next nine days. Simbang gabi fatigue sets in. Body clocks stutter and stall, sudden naps are taken at the lunch table. Tempers frazzle, it’s not only the dogs that snap and snarl. The spirit of Christmas gets stomped on and booted out of the window but only until Christmas eve, when we declare a truce, because Christmas day is Visitors Day.
They come in droves. Soon the house is chockablock but never mind; the turbo-broiler works overtime, an Apo of spaghetti is prepared and, still smoking slightly, a lechon is shouldered in upon a bamboo pole to cheers and the rustle of supot bags. Later, as the children semi-circle the television, we exchange gifts, a last-ditch attempt to pass on the glass monstrosity.
It didn’t work. New Year’s Day, we had brewed a hearty punch, a toast to the future, sipping from transparent cups encrusted with glass barnacles. Maybe we’ll get rid of the thing next year.
(Gary Covington writes for Sun.Star Davao)
(January 8, 2004 issue)
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