How the grinch celebrates Christmas

My husband says that for an agnostic, I get some parts of Christmas right. But I only get it after much kicking and screaming. 

I have every right to be grumpy. After all, Filipinos have the longest Christmas season in the world.

And recently, it is started earlier and earlier. Commercial establishments start playing Christmas carols in September. I tend to ignore store music but I swear under my breath when, in the heat of a tropical day, I have to choose my foot powder to a jazzy rendition of “White Christmas.” The message is clear by the way: “Buy you fools! Buy! Make MY Christmas a prosperous one.”

I hold out for as long as I can as my form of socialist resistance to the ravages of commercialized religiosity. Mostly I play mind games like: “Think of mother earth. No more junk. You don’t need to give your neighbor a plastic singing Santa just because he gave you a hologram of Jesus that winks.”

My other form of resistance is to make sure I have bought my gifts by middle or late November. That way I miss all the joy of sweaty crowds, raised prices, and the give-everyone-you-know-a-useless-item-lest they-think-you’re-poor-or-cheap mania. Also I try to source my gifts from women’s organizations, farmers’ organic cooperatives, etc. Now that the kids are older, they don’t expect gifts unless they ask for it. I am proud to say they rarely do. As for the hubby and I, we give each other gifts if something worthy comes along. So I gave him an encyclopedia of the comic characters of his youth this Christmas and he, thankfully, gave me nothing in return.

I am grateful that my husband takes care of Christmas decorations. He grew up a country bumpkin and tells me that if I complain about Christmas in this big and bad megapolis, I would never survive Christmas in his home town. He says I only get incensed at traditional songs being sung ala “Stars on 45” because I did not grow up on the “Merry Christmas Polka.”

So he compromises with me by putting up the Christmas decorations in November, though he would rather do it earlier. In other words, from September when the opportunists  a.k.a merchants begin playing Christmas music, throughout November when my house is in Christmas mode, I do not pay attention to my surroundings. There are advantages to having attention deficit disorder. 

Pleasure principle

But in the end, I do give in. When my kids were younger, I did not want them to miss the fun. I have had my fill of dour fundamentalists of both the Left and the Right who are afraid of other people’s pleasures whilst theirs get justified as the small indulgences of the martyred elite or worse, a moral or principled activity. Thus, I am not going to allow a lifetime of agnosticism to get in the way of a little fun, whether it be my own or the nation’s.

I start my own Christmas on December 15. And I normally do this by playing Handel’s “Messiah.” Loud. Really loud. Somehow, Handel’s “Messiah” unclogs my ears which have been tuned out as a form of protection from the tacky, opportunistic, pedestrian, and amateur Christmas music playing around me.

Then I go on to listening to traditional songs sung by a full choir and backed up by a full orchestra.

I like hard rock (of the 60s and 70s) and I like classical music. I try to explain this to the kids who appreciate my liking for rock but not classical music. I tell them that if Led Zeppelin were performing before the industrial age, they would have been composing for full choir and orchestra. The Led would have needed those to make that much noise. I try to make them understand that Beethoven was merely the hard rocker of his era.

Grand and enduring

The best thing about traditional Christmas carols is that, like really good rock, it tends to be over-the-top. This to me is the true spirit of Christmas. What I really like is the license given to poets, artists and musicians to have no restraint except that it must not be about their individual egos.  After all, if one were to accept the premise of the Season, then nothing on earth or heaven could possibly be more significant.

And that is why I like the traditional carols. None of this secularized, individualistic, industrial age stuff for me. I like the high flown lyrics as well as the grand music. Let a fully trained orchestra and choir play and sing their hearts out in praise. Excellence is required of all the performers because we are talking about the purest and highest stuff. 

In the song “We Three Kings,” they sing: “Alleluia, Alleluia! Sounds through the earth and the skies.” In “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” all nations are commanded to rise joyfully to “join the triumph of the skies.” The command in Adeste Fidelis is: “Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation! Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above.”

The Lord your God is born, ye department store owners. Do you really think He expects you to sell stuff? I understand Jesus loves even the karaoke boy and his pleasure in singing. But does his lone and off-key voice complement that of the choirs of exulting angels? Nah. Give me two orchestras and two choirs (Handel, I love you!) to match the spirit of the occasion.

I believe that all the most important things can be found in the carols that have endured. After all, that is what you will get when you ask true artists to reach for the highest of the high. And sorry people, it isn’t about mommy kissing Santa Claus.

It is about, “Chains shall He break for the slave is our sister. And in His name all oppression shall cease.” Let the oppressed hear the angels sing:

O ye beneath life’s crushing load, 
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.

Silence, solitude and peace

My favorite Filipino song, does not even mention Christmas, though it is in most of our Christmas albums. It is entitled, “Payapang Daigdig (Peaceful World).” It was composed by national artist  Felipe de Leon as Manila lay in ruins during the Second World War. We were the second most devastated city of that war, after Poland. After the bombings that reduced the city to rubble, Manila became an open city and the fighting was from street to street. I listen to this song last in the Season, towards the end when things have died down. I imagine a city weary from war.  In the devastation, people finally are gifted with, what the song calls, “God’s gift to humanity.” That gift is a quiet peace.

At some point during the Season, I try to find that which is increasingly difficult in an always connected world. Solitude and silence. Peace is felt at many levels. But for a feminist who has worked to heal the violence in intimate relationships, I know it begins at home. In the luxury of silence and solitude.

I believe that whatever it is that people wish to call that which goes beyond individual concerns, whether we call it sacred or love or solidarity, then it is to be found first in silence and solitude.

It is in solitude where I learn to forgive the merchants, the karaoke boy and the neighbor who gave me the winking hologram of Jesus. It is in silence where I accept that I am complicit in oppression and renew nonetheless my commitment to resistance. It is in peace that I find the beating hearts of the few that I have come to love. It is a moment when eros meets agape and the result is joy.

The best of the Season to all. I hope that each of you will find time for silence and solitude. May the promises of the carols be fulfilled in our lives. Liberation and love, peace and joy. – Rappler.com