Finding Christmas

It is rather early, but I just found Christmas. I found it a few days ago, while driving down south. I found it along the seaside boulevard going into Valladolid town, where people have set up a row of Christmas trees made from “bakhaw,” mangrove trees with many spindly branches.

Since the bakhaw grows wide at its base and thins gradually to its top, it approximates the conical shape of the traditional Christmas tree, making it a cheap and convenient Pinoy alternative to the pine or fir.

The boulevard Christmas trees are handmade, adorned with tinsel and cheap glitters, like used compact discs, and they are a showcase of village creativity and craftsmanship. They shimmer under the sun, and sway as the sea winds blow here and there, evoking the Christmases of my childhood, when bakhaw was the most popular material for  Yuletide trees and decorations were mostly handmade. Who would have thought tinsel, otherwise garish by itself, can turn pretty up there on those trees? Who would have thought Yule trees can be colorfully dramatic, even at daytime, without the benefit of electric lights?

Add to that the naturally cool breeze  that blows in these parts at this time of the year, and the sight of green fields along the way, and there is, decidedly,  excitement and expectation in the air unlike any other time of the year. It's what the old folks used to call the “ripe” season, when things are ready to be picked and plucked, in this case, when things are falling into place for The  Celebration of the Saviour’s birth.

Those Boulevard trees are a throwback to the time when mothers painted or beaded or wrapped balls for the trees, when lanterns had to be painstakingly constructed, cut and pasted, and blinkering lights were a luxury only the affluent can afford.

Come to think of it: whatever happened to the patterns of lanterns that we used to cut out of cartolina,  stapled together and hung?  The age-old tradition of parol making, thank God, is still alive and well, but many other Christmas ways like the Snowman made from whipped Perla soap and cannons made from bamboo poles, Yule trees made with bilaho – sugarcane flowers -- have long gone. They simply disappeared in the onslaught of more convenient and even cheaper  yuletide symbols: the plastic garlands and trees and wreaths, the ready to use lanterns, the cheap lights. Why make lanterns when one can just hang rice lights, and they are cheaper and more convenient?

Indeed, at a time when Christmas has been commercialized to the point when we can have a hundred Santas climbing our homes, gingerbread houses by the lot, and mechanical trees that glow by themselves, the Yule trees by the sea in Dolid tugged quietly but deeply at one’s heart, the only place where one can truly find Christmas.

They remind us that the season is not about expensive decorations, that it can be celebrated without spending a lot. It is a timely reminder, considering our seemingly mad rush for the sales of the season, and how we are replacing the meaningful with the loud and garish but oftentimes shallow.

How heartwarming  to see these Yule symbols, painstakingly done by hand and shared proudly with everyone. The trees in Dolid were the first to rise for the season, but there are others also rising. Along the road from Bangga Patyo in San Enrique going to La Carlota, people are also starting to build little Christmas trees from bamboo and other native materials.

And when night falls, thousands of blinkering lights are  now starting to shimmer and glow  in homes and other buildings, as people come together to welcome the Christ Child.

Yes, Christmas is here. *

back to top