The Eastern Samar Team Blog

Growing up with Christmas

It now all seem too long ago. Christmas just isnt what it was to me before. Maybe I’ve outgrown the thrill of staying up till late at night trying to get a glimpse of Santa once he drops by. Maybe I’ve lost the feel that candy-filled Christmas stockings bring. Maybe the value of Ninong’s Christmas gift has depreciated with the peso. Maybe I am not a child anymore. But once every year, during Christmas time, I wish I never grew up. Christmas is a treasure chest of happy childhood memories. It is true here and everywhere, now and whenever. Literally or figuratively, Christmas is a season of the child.

Christmas will never be as pure and as simple than in the heart of a child. My own childhood Christmases were defined by the simplest things. Yet deep inside me, it never really feels like a complete Christmas without them.

My first memories of Christmas was ube jam. It was one of my Lola’s best kept secret recipes. For me, her ube jam practically became the main course of our Christmas dinner. And the ube jam by which all other ube jams will be measured. And nothing came close. The secret maybe was growing up with ube jam. At first I would only wait for the ube jam to be done and enjoy eating it any time I want. Then as I grew older, I got more and more involved in making the ube jam. One Christmas I was allowed to help wash the ube, then the next Christmas I was already helping Lola stir the recipe until we got the right texture. “Stir in one direction only,”she would always say. Every Christmas I felt I grew up with Lola and her ube jam. Yet I never got Lola’s kitchen touch. Especially with her ube jam.

As I started to feel the “power of the purse,” some things again came to mean Christmas to me. Ninong and Ninang became the magic words. Unfortunately for me, I only had 1 ninong and 1 ninang and they lived far away from home. But fortunately for me, my uncles and aunties lived just either upstairs or next room or 2 houses down the street. So they bore the brunt of a ninong-less and ninang-less nephew. But it was not as if kissing their hands was an easy way to get gifts. At an early age, just like everybody else, I earned my “pinaskuhan”. “Katsarit” then became the meaning of Christmas for me. With my brothers and 2 or 3 other boys from the neighborhood, we would gather empty cans, bottle caps and plastic containers and turn them into a makeshift drumset and other instruments. We would then go caroling from one house to the next, and before retiring, we would divide our gifts. The next days would follow the same routine - same houses, same boys, same songs, same instruments, same gifts. Yet the monotony never seemed to dampen the magic of Christmas. It seemed every single night, though essentially the same, still held its own singularity.

My circle of friends started to get bigger and soon enough Christmas had an additional meaning. As I advanced in school, “manito” and “manita” became the Christmas stars. At first it was the excitement of receiving something from someone not an uncle or a ninong. Christmas was starting to be really cool. I can actually get a gift from anybody. Not just from people that I know. But before I can receive anything, there was first the hard part of finding something to give to my manito/manita. I had no inkling then that it would be no less true in our whole life.

Then, as if by fate, Christmas would turn the child in me into the man I should be. When I lost Tatay a few Christmases ago, Christmas took on a much bigger meaning - family. Yet when I look back at all my past Christmases now, I realize all these time it had always been about family. For Jesus, the child, may be the center of the Nativity scene, but the bigger picture is actually the family.

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Caralido Just another aspiring writer who once showed a lot of promise but got lost in translation because I didn't want to impress, just fully express!