Sunday, September 30, 2007 Sun.star Essay: A break in spirit By Erma M. Cuizon Sun.star essay
IT seems that some people’s idea of relaxation or a pause from routine is letting go, dancing, singing and laughing out loud, like a boy who has just jumped into the cool waters of a quiet river one bright summer day, yelling in laughter.
You’d scream to your heart’s content, jump and laugh, and laugh, without anyone staring at you in surprise. Say, once a year, you let go because everyone else is doing so. In a day, or in a week, in the presence of friends, you celebrate and it doesn’t matter what. It’s like a chance to surface from the water and inhale before going under again.
It just struck me that Oktoberfest is such a celebration. The guys in these days always look forward to Oktoberfest.
Imagine how it is in Munich this October where it must have started---singing, dancing, feasting. In the morning, there’s a parade of breweries in wagons pulled by horses. To the beat of the Bavarian brass bands, waitresses carry one-liter beer mugs, as many as each can, for a prize.
In the festival area are beer tents put up. The ceremonies after the parade begins with the mayor going inside one of the tents at 12 noon and a cannon is fired into the air a dozen times, just before the mayor taps the first keg and pours beer into his mug. Then he raises his mug and shouts to the happy crowd in a toast---“The keg is tapped!”
Centuries ago, the beer fest started out as a horse race to celebrate a royal wedding in Germany. Somewhere along the way in 1819, instead of horses were paraded beer carts, with the dancing and singing aspect of the celebration which turning it into a jubilee, not only in one day of fun drinking the favorite beverage but for 16 days.
Today it’s a Bavarian tourist attraction to where millions of tourists are said to flock to be part of the German Oktoberfest in beer tents. In the celebration, the kids have fun, too. But they’re given special non-alcoholic drinks, such as apple juice, milk shakes, etc.
In the Philippines as anywhere else in the world today, there is the commercial part of it---the festival as a chance for breweries to attract more buyers of their beer and other alcoholic drinks. In fact, many tourist spots celebrate the Oktoberfest, many of the celebrations in parties and concerts put up by San Miguel Brewery and Asia Brewery.
And it is surely part of the tourism attraction, now a month-long partying in beer tents, like the ones sponsored by San Miguel Brewery for their Pale Pilsen beer in Cebu City and in six other cities in the country, also in Santa Rosa, Laguna.
But Oktoberfest is not quite the same as when the guys in town come together for a respite from work in the field or the sea, or even down under the ground in mining sites, to drink tuba and sing, or dance. Of course, if they had too much of tuba, a fistfight could ensue, or even a worst incident. But generally, the drinking sprees of Filipinos, Oktoberfest or not, is fun, it’s the break from too much work in the farm and too cold nights out fishing.
But when does beer or tuba feasting get overdone? And who’s there to watch over you and say, “Hey, that’s enough”? The guys would instead say, “Oh, c’mon, drink up, tagay, bay!”
There was a neighbor who talked about his tuba fest. At midnight one time on his way home from a drinking spree, he fell on the way side and woke up in the chilly dawn, still in the side street.
The feeling is familiar to all drunken neighborly Filipinos---when the tongue slips oftener than usual, but weak and flat, or when the arms become too heavy for normal motions, or the consciousness lapses.
Enjoy the October fest but get a hold of yourself.
