Don’t we all know it. As soon as the Ber months commence, malls and supermarkets start pelting us with Christmas carols.
I suspect this is to make us lighthearted just a wee bit so as to loosen our purses and pockets.
In my case, when December descends, before Alexa came, I used to pull out my tray of Christmas CDs and fill the slots of my gritty carousel player.
I permeate the nippy air at home with covers from the Gunther Kalmann Choir to Kenny G to the Windham Hill musicians.
If we now grumble how hard the times have become, we could cushion these with Noel melodies.
Make yourself giggle with “Sabit Sabit Christmas Tree” composed by Yoyoy Villame and rendered by the Madrigal Singers.
Though Jose Mari Chan may rule the airwaves, the oldies among us would still feel cozy with Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”.
Accuse us of colonial mentality, but that song has formed part of our pleasant memories.
When we see a snow-covered cottage on a Christmas card, we beam with recognition and probably think we remember it as part of our own personal experience.
We conjure images of us wrapped in woolen throws sitting before a crackling fireplace and popping chestnuts into our mouths. Ahhh!
Ever since the Americans taught us “A is for Apple”, “This is the way we brush our teeth”, and that song from Kansas on longing “Home on the Range”, that was it - we have been hooked on Santa, probably until the autumn of our lives.
As an aside, the St. Nick that we know - rotund, jolly, sporting a white beard and wearing a red suit - originated only in 1931 in an ad campaign by Coca Cola.
Painted by an artist named Haddon Sundblom, red Santa is one of the most enduring images of giving that persists even with our grandchildren.
That he has no chimneys to slide into in the Philippines does not stop him from being all over the archipelago.
It is safe to assume that when we learned English, the American hybrid that is, we also ingested not just its nuances and its slang but also the images, the tunes, the smells and the traditions that came with the tongue.
Educators say that it is best to teach foreign language or music (which is said to be another language altogether) to children at a young age because they innocently absorb data like a sponge.
A five-year old has the enormous capacity to receive infinite information that form basis for his or her bank of memories.
It is the bank of memories that makes us behave the way we do. Until today, countless Filipinos look at America as their destiny.
Being bombarded at a young age with the American way, our wiring impels us to, say, seek a winter wonderland in our Pasko.
I know of a couple who saved up for their family to savor a white Christmas in the USA.
They came up with beautiful pictures of themselves sleighing in the snow and making snowballs and snowmen.
Even if it was really their first time, the husband and wife were déjà vu ecstatic in “re-living” a holiday dream.
Their four children, on the other hand, were shivering and swearing: what the F…never again!
But take note, young families are celebrating with so much “emo” and being with it America’s version of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Halloween with costumes, Jack O’Lantern and all.
Why, they now celebrate Thanksgiving! Holy Norman Rockwell!
The most convenient, conventional but contested explanation for all these is that Filipinos have a damaged culture and are imprisoned in colonial mentality, meaning they see all things foreign as superior and those that are indigenous as unworthy.
The thesis suggests a picture of Filipinos as lemmings or Pied Piper’s rats scurrying happily to their death in the Yankee sea. Such cynicism and righteous condemnation of how we think and discern.
As a senior citizen, may I wield my imagined privilege of being cranky and say bah to such declarations.
I accept the fact that I am an amalgam of many cultures - like Americans are or like any other nationality for that matter.
For all we know, the hundreds of Koreans who learn English in the Philippines may in the future look for a Pinoy Christmas with bibingka and tsokolate E in it.
I don’t believe that remembering dismembers our identity. As long as we are aware of what is good and what is deleterious, or what is poison and what is tonic, we are good.
As long as we recognize errors in our make up and try to rectify them, we are free men.
Anyway, why agonize? Please permit me to keep warm and hug my stack of fluffy pillows and hum with Natalie Cole and David Foster’s take of “A Grown-Up Christmas List”.
Though I am no longer a child, please allow my heart to dream of a universal Christmas, before Alzheimer’s turns this way and make me forget what Christmas is all about.