Christmases of long ago
December 24, 2008
RICOCHET
Rene Ezpeleta Bartolo
Remembering Christmases of long ago
Magallanes Street in Roxas City, Capiz, was a stretch of road that ran five blocks from the old plaza beside the equally old provincial capitol building down to Banica Elementary School. Along the road were houses of bamboo and nipa; having a wooden house then was a symbol of affluence.
It was in the early 50s, and Roxas City, like most towns in Panay Island in Western Visayas, was still peopled by old families whose surnames were chosen from a list of Spanish words pasted by the Spaniards outside the church door.
The Spanish masters had been gone barely half a century before and they had left indelible marks in the way of life of the natives of the city. For example, when church bells rang for the Angelus at 6:00 in the early evening, everybody and everything stopped. Cars, carretelas, bicycles froze on the streets. People, including those who were not Catholics, stopped on their tracks, dropped what they were doing, and conversation ceased.
The capitol building was of Spanish structure, so were the limestone church, the parish rectory and La Purisima College on the other side of the plaza. Around the plaza – the centro – were the wooden and limestone houses of the ilustrados, the Castilian half-breeds who had taken over leadership of the land.
Roxas City was an “A” town, meaning, surnames of the old families began with the letter “A” – Arnaldo, Alcantara, Abalajon, Atienza, and others. The old families of Magallanes St. were also “A” families – Amacio, Aguiling, Asis, Azarcon – and they were mostly relatives.
My father’s father was not from Roxas City; he was an itinerant peddler from Macabebe, Pampanga, who married an Albia of Magallanes. Father was an only child and, at that time, his family were the only “B’s” among the “A’s” of Magallanes Street.
Christmas season for us children began early, soon after classes closed, which was, more or less, the 15th of December. But the truth was, the celebration of the Christmas days were not bound by dates or limited by time.
As soon as the month of December began, so did the Christmas “hunting” season. December was, for sure, a month much-awaited by us children because caroling was like “hunting” – an exciting predatory game of pestering the relatives, who were, by and large willing and generous prey.
Some 50 families along the stretch of Magallanes St. were relatives and it was compulsory to visit and sing carols for each one of them. If by some mistake or negligence a relative’s house was left out, it would be a major issue that would reach Father’s attention and cause year-long blame and recrimination.
The regulation and unspoken cost of a carol was 10 centavos per Christmas song, and it was easy for my two brothers and two sisters and me to net P2 a night. The money was good enough; what we could not take, literally, was the food that we had to eat from doting uncles and aunts.
We reserved for Christmas Eve our favorite uncle whom the family called “Dikyam” after the Negro friend of Kenkoy from the Hiligaynon comics magazine. Uncle Diki (that was how he wanted us to call him) Asis was a huge, black and obese man who was the provincial sheriff of Capiz. Because their children, our cousins Berting, Unggong and Emak -- were already young adults at that time, Uncle Diki and Auntie Puring lavished and pampered us children.
Invariably, all five of us would be at their house by suppertime. We sang and danced for Uncle Diki and his family and, for the performance, we received one peso each, and there were gifts – toys and candies and new clothes – for each one. Supper was always sumptuous and we would stay on, eating and playing, until Father fetched us.
We had to be in church at the stroke of 12:00 midnight; it was unforgivable to be anywhere else. Mother deposited the sleeping younger children in a relative’s house nearby, but my elder brother and I had to be with our parents to attend the Christmas Mass.
The huge limestone church was packed with worshipping humanity intoning lines of the Latin liturgy. The air was heavy with human sweat and the sweet smell of incense, and my brother and I dozed and nodded until the church bells rang riot and the people shouted at the top of their voices in joy that Jesus was born! It was Christmas!
Outside the church, there was a deluge of delicacies, sold cheap by stall owners infected with the generosity bug of Christmas: ibos, suman, suman latik, butong-butong, baye-baye, kalamay-hati, inday-inday, and jars and jars of thick, sweet tsokolate.
Father always brought along a pocketful of coins because on the way home we would be accosted by caroling children and nobody ever refused or brushed aside a caroler.
Heavy with food and limp with exhaustion my brother and I would sleep until late in the morning of Christmas Day. There would be more food and more exhausting things to do when we woke up.
The farm help from Panitan, a town south of the city, had brought early that morning pantat, haluan, kasili, puyo gurami (the latter two are of the tilapia family) alive and squirming inside earthen jars. The fish were caught with bamboo traps in rice paddies and these were the native variety. They abounded in the rice farms of Capiz before pesticides and fertilizers decimated them.
Pantat tasted best when barbecued and broiled in slow fire but it was an unspoken rule in the house that whoever wanted to eat pantat outside of regular meals had to kill, clean and broil the fish himself.
My brother and I ladled out the fish from the jar and as it lay squirming with thorny fins at the sides sticking out, we bashed its head with a piece of wood. The gills and entrails were removed through a slit in the stomach, and the slimy skin was cleaned with ash and guava leaves.
Skewered with a bamboo stick, as many fish as we could clean – definitely more than we could eat – were positioned over a slow charcoal fire. The aroma of broiled pantat is like nothing else in the world and we ate the fish even when still half-cooked. By lunchtime, we were too full to eat properly.
Christmases of long ago were simple, as simple as the faith that brought them around every year. Even the frills like lights and lanterns were fashioned with industry and love, and the Christmas trees – an American innovation – were coconut ribs mounted on bamboo poles.
Gift-giving and food-sharing were acts of neighborly love, not social routines done in absent-minded compliance with the demands of tradition.
For many, Christmas was a reaffirmation of affinity, restatement of relationship, a rekindling of attachments that may have gone lukewarm during the year.
Few people greeted one another “Merry Christmas” in the Christmases of long ago.
The greeting would have been a redundancy.
(For comments and reactions, e-mail: renebartolo.rico@ymail.com)
RICOCHET
Rene Ezpeleta Bartolo
Remembering Christmases of long ago
Magallanes Street in Roxas City, Capiz, was a stretch of road that ran five blocks from the old plaza beside the equally old provincial capitol building down to Banica Elementary School. Along the road were houses of bamboo and nipa; having a wooden house then was a symbol of affluence.
It was in the early 50s, and Roxas City, like most towns in Panay Island in Western Visayas, was still peopled by old families whose surnames were chosen from a list of Spanish words pasted by the Spaniards outside the church door.
The Spanish masters had been gone barely half a century before and they had left indelible marks in the way of life of the natives of the city. For example, when church bells rang for the Angelus at 6:00 in the early evening, everybody and everything stopped. Cars, carretelas, bicycles froze on the streets. People, including those who were not Catholics, stopped on their tracks, dropped what they were doing, and conversation ceased.
The capitol building was of Spanish structure, so were the limestone church, the parish rectory and La Purisima College on the other side of the plaza. Around the plaza – the centro – were the wooden and limestone houses of the ilustrados, the Castilian half-breeds who had taken over leadership of the land.
Roxas City was an “A” town, meaning, surnames of the old families began with the letter “A” – Arnaldo, Alcantara, Abalajon, Atienza, and others. The old families of Magallanes St. were also “A” families – Amacio, Aguiling, Asis, Azarcon – and they were mostly relatives.
My father’s father was not from Roxas City; he was an itinerant peddler from Macabebe, Pampanga, who married an Albia of Magallanes. Father was an only child and, at that time, his family were the only “B’s” among the “A’s” of Magallanes Street.
Christmas season for us children began early, soon after classes closed, which was, more or less, the 15th of December. But the truth was, the celebration of the Christmas days were not bound by dates or limited by time.
As soon as the month of December began, so did the Christmas “hunting” season. December was, for sure, a month much-awaited by us children because caroling was like “hunting” – an exciting predatory game of pestering the relatives, who were, by and large willing and generous prey.
Some 50 families along the stretch of Magallanes St. were relatives and it was compulsory to visit and sing carols for each one of them. If by some mistake or negligence a relative’s house was left out, it would be a major issue that would reach Father’s attention and cause year-long blame and recrimination.
The regulation and unspoken cost of a carol was 10 centavos per Christmas song, and it was easy for my two brothers and two sisters and me to net P2 a night. The money was good enough; what we could not take, literally, was the food that we had to eat from doting uncles and aunts.
We reserved for Christmas Eve our favorite uncle whom the family called “Dikyam” after the Negro friend of Kenkoy from the Hiligaynon comics magazine. Uncle Diki (that was how he wanted us to call him) Asis was a huge, black and obese man who was the provincial sheriff of Capiz. Because their children, our cousins Berting, Unggong and Emak -- were already young adults at that time, Uncle Diki and Auntie Puring lavished and pampered us children.
Invariably, all five of us would be at their house by suppertime. We sang and danced for Uncle Diki and his family and, for the performance, we received one peso each, and there were gifts – toys and candies and new clothes – for each one. Supper was always sumptuous and we would stay on, eating and playing, until Father fetched us.
We had to be in church at the stroke of 12:00 midnight; it was unforgivable to be anywhere else. Mother deposited the sleeping younger children in a relative’s house nearby, but my elder brother and I had to be with our parents to attend the Christmas Mass.
The huge limestone church was packed with worshipping humanity intoning lines of the Latin liturgy. The air was heavy with human sweat and the sweet smell of incense, and my brother and I dozed and nodded until the church bells rang riot and the people shouted at the top of their voices in joy that Jesus was born! It was Christmas!
Outside the church, there was a deluge of delicacies, sold cheap by stall owners infected with the generosity bug of Christmas: ibos, suman, suman latik, butong-butong, baye-baye, kalamay-hati, inday-inday, and jars and jars of thick, sweet tsokolate.
Father always brought along a pocketful of coins because on the way home we would be accosted by caroling children and nobody ever refused or brushed aside a caroler.
Heavy with food and limp with exhaustion my brother and I would sleep until late in the morning of Christmas Day. There would be more food and more exhausting things to do when we woke up.
The farm help from Panitan, a town south of the city, had brought early that morning pantat, haluan, kasili, puyo gurami (the latter two are of the tilapia family) alive and squirming inside earthen jars. The fish were caught with bamboo traps in rice paddies and these were the native variety. They abounded in the rice farms of Capiz before pesticides and fertilizers decimated them.
Pantat tasted best when barbecued and broiled in slow fire but it was an unspoken rule in the house that whoever wanted to eat pantat outside of regular meals had to kill, clean and broil the fish himself.
My brother and I ladled out the fish from the jar and as it lay squirming with thorny fins at the sides sticking out, we bashed its head with a piece of wood. The gills and entrails were removed through a slit in the stomach, and the slimy skin was cleaned with ash and guava leaves.
Skewered with a bamboo stick, as many fish as we could clean – definitely more than we could eat – were positioned over a slow charcoal fire. The aroma of broiled pantat is like nothing else in the world and we ate the fish even when still half-cooked. By lunchtime, we were too full to eat properly.
Christmases of long ago were simple, as simple as the faith that brought them around every year. Even the frills like lights and lanterns were fashioned with industry and love, and the Christmas trees – an American innovation – were coconut ribs mounted on bamboo poles.
Gift-giving and food-sharing were acts of neighborly love, not social routines done in absent-minded compliance with the demands of tradition.
For many, Christmas was a reaffirmation of affinity, restatement of relationship, a rekindling of attachments that may have gone lukewarm during the year.
Few people greeted one another “Merry Christmas” in the Christmases of long ago.
The greeting would have been a redundancy.
(For comments and reactions, e-mail: renebartolo.rico@ymail.com)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Carolina B. Balmaceda on
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Permalink Reply by Alexander Mabalot on -
Merry Christmas Mr. Bartolo!
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Permalink Reply by Rene Ezpeleta Bartolo on -
MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone at Taboan Mindanao!
Here's wishing the group
A New Year free from fear,
A Future safe and sure,
A prosperous Mindanao
In the here and now!
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Permalink Reply by emma linda malacaste diolola on -
mao jud..merry Christmas..24th dec..suya ko kay nakatulog ko before sa 12 midnight..hala, first time jud nahitabo sukad nga nahamtong na ko..gamay ra man gud ang nangarol, unya haskang mungawa sa among lugar (sa tugbok ko nagpuyo) sa una lipay na mi kong dunay bayntsingko nga ihatag sa amo after manganta mig christmas song, kanang humanon jud ang kanta..hatagan mig 25, pinutos pa jud ug papel.katong 24 sa gabiii kay nag andam ko kay basig makarolingan among balay..ngeh, mingawa oi, lupig man ang kalag kalag ug bernes santo..nakatulog na lang noon ko..3 ra man gud mi, ako si xj ug si ninja nga akong iro...sa new year dili ko didto magpaabot sa bag ong tuig kay makabuang ang kamingaw hehehe..sa tanan,,,happy new year..lahi ra sa unang panahon......
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Permalink Reply by emma linda malacaste diolola on
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lingaw ang mga kanta karon kay in ani o..i never let you sing2x..and never, and never let you sing....sumpayan dayun ug o magsaya at magdiwa pagkat sumila na...kung makadungog ko kay magkunot kunot jud akong agtang..lami keu mag tudlo ug kant about pasko kanang, kompleto...hahay..lahi ra jud.....
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