Christmas
I really do hate Christmas. It's all so wasteful and incredibly hollow.
Like. if you're a complete ass all year long but gave a server a $100 tip for Christmas, you're a great guy. If you donate a Christmas hamper, you've helped a poor family sooooo much.
Really? One meal? Yes, at the end of the day it's better than nothing, but ultimately it really is nothing. Those people still get left behind in the dredges of society and they would suffer and die with little ceremony while everyone else gets to pat their backs for being such giving souls. I think of it in parallel to how Daniel left Fern to care and feed Jericho for six months on her own, and after all that he still gets to be daddy and Fern is the bad guy. Does he not realize that when he dropped the ball so royally, without Fern, there would be no Jericho anymore? He didn't care what Fern did or if Fern failed, but if she did there would be no more Jericho!
Anyways... I grew up loving Christmas.
Mamang used to buy all of us cousins outfits to wear to Christmas mass, sometimes matching ones. There was at least one time that tita Lovie was in town for the holidays and I got gifts that year that I don't remember anymore, but I remember I got to have my own little sparkler and was drawing smokey circles in the air with it.
One time in Isabela, us kids decorated a houseplant with paper loops that we looped together and we made cut-out paper stars and hearts that we colored because we couldnt even buy coloured paper and we didn't have ornamenets... We didnt even have enough looped paper to wrap around the plant... XD That year, I got a small box that had socks and a striped shirt in it from santa/my parents. And my literal school sock got some peso coins, a chocolate coin, and three local candies.
There was another Christmas before my mom and dad left for Saudi Arabia where mom gave my sister and I a teddybear each. They were just her display things from her little baby line for her Barclay seller thing, but I treasured and loved mine so much until it got destroyed by my cousin by dumping masking fluid all over it's left eye and cheek. She told me my bear and I matched cause my left eye was discolored... Anyway, That year, the adults had a drinking sesh. The neighbour's maid cried when Toni Braxton's Unbreak my Heart came on during the annual top 100 on the radio and it was revealed that she had been having an affair with the married family friend who used to drive our jeepney for us.
For me, Christmas season was about watching everyone cook and sneaking tastes of everything. It was about getting to stay up late with everyone, leaving the front door open and eating good food with everyone. It was about kids running around town paying their respects to their elders to get some money on Christmas morning while the adults chatted and caught up like they haven't seen each other all year but they gossi all the time... I got most of my money from my aunts and uncles cause my ninongs and ninangs were not around...
I don't like receiving gifts just because it's Christmas. I appreciate thoughtful, caring gifts, but I hate the 'obligation to give something because it's Christmas-ness' of Christmas season. I also hate the obligation of spending time with people who I don't spend any time with the rest of the year because there was just little relationship there. Having to listen to people basically make passive-aggressive comments about other people who aren't there or even just across the room like they're just discurring the fucking weather also sucks. Then there's also the braggy aspect of it, and who gets to have the more impressive story...
Maybe I'm just curmudgeony and can't appreciate the warmth of Christmas or whatever... But I feel like the true warmth of Christmas is lost
Like. if you're a complete ass all year long but gave a server a $100 tip for Christmas, you're a great guy. If you donate a Christmas hamper, you've helped a poor family sooooo much.
Really? One meal? Yes, at the end of the day it's better than nothing, but ultimately it really is nothing. Those people still get left behind in the dredges of society and they would suffer and die with little ceremony while everyone else gets to pat their backs for being such giving souls. I think of it in parallel to how Daniel left Fern to care and feed Jericho for six months on her own, and after all that he still gets to be daddy and Fern is the bad guy. Does he not realize that when he dropped the ball so royally, without Fern, there would be no Jericho anymore? He didn't care what Fern did or if Fern failed, but if she did there would be no more Jericho!
Anyways... I grew up loving Christmas.
Mamang used to buy all of us cousins outfits to wear to Christmas mass, sometimes matching ones. There was at least one time that tita Lovie was in town for the holidays and I got gifts that year that I don't remember anymore, but I remember I got to have my own little sparkler and was drawing smokey circles in the air with it.
One time in Isabela, us kids decorated a houseplant with paper loops that we looped together and we made cut-out paper stars and hearts that we colored because we couldnt even buy coloured paper and we didn't have ornamenets... We didnt even have enough looped paper to wrap around the plant... XD That year, I got a small box that had socks and a striped shirt in it from santa/my parents. And my literal school sock got some peso coins, a chocolate coin, and three local candies.
There was another Christmas before my mom and dad left for Saudi Arabia where mom gave my sister and I a teddybear each. They were just her display things from her little baby line for her Barclay seller thing, but I treasured and loved mine so much until it got destroyed by my cousin by dumping masking fluid all over it's left eye and cheek. She told me my bear and I matched cause my left eye was discolored... Anyway, That year, the adults had a drinking sesh. The neighbour's maid cried when Toni Braxton's Unbreak my Heart came on during the annual top 100 on the radio and it was revealed that she had been having an affair with the married family friend who used to drive our jeepney for us.
For me, Christmas season was about watching everyone cook and sneaking tastes of everything. It was about getting to stay up late with everyone, leaving the front door open and eating good food with everyone. It was about kids running around town paying their respects to their elders to get some money on Christmas morning while the adults chatted and caught up like they haven't seen each other all year but they gossi all the time... I got most of my money from my aunts and uncles cause my ninongs and ninangs were not around...
I don't like receiving gifts just because it's Christmas. I appreciate thoughtful, caring gifts, but I hate the 'obligation to give something because it's Christmas-ness' of Christmas season. I also hate the obligation of spending time with people who I don't spend any time with the rest of the year because there was just little relationship there. Having to listen to people basically make passive-aggressive comments about other people who aren't there or even just across the room like they're just discurring the fucking weather also sucks. Then there's also the braggy aspect of it, and who gets to have the more impressive story...
Maybe I'm just curmudgeony and can't appreciate the warmth of Christmas or whatever... But I feel like the true warmth of Christmas is lost