The last time I remembered a rainy Christmas was in 2019 – incidentally, the year before Covid-19 struck. Of course, for me, it wasn’t exactly a blue day, as my mother and I joined some relatives on a trip to Quezon province to visit a cousin-in-law’s family.
And I have to say this: if you want to feel the cold ambiance of Baguio and Tagaytay but don’t like the crowds, a rainy day in the mountains of Quezon province could very well be ideal for you. I remember looking out of the second-floor balcony of my cousin’s house, watching the fog settling in at nearby Mount Pinagbanderahan, while downstairs, local youngsters brave the drizzle as they went about from house to house doing the traditional “Pamamasko.”
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This year, it’s not just the rainy weather (and the floods and the traffic) that made Christmas 2025 “blue” for many of us Lagunenses.
There’s also the piercing reality that, despite all the talk about a booming economy and Laguna province being a top contributor of the country’s gross domestic product and blah, blah, blah, prices of goods have remained high, almost out of reach for most of us who are still struggling to get back on their feet more than two years after the Covid-19 pandemic.
These days, just getting by in our everyday lives can be considered a minor triumph – but that triumph tends to dissipate by the start of yet another day. The once-much-anticipated rituals of Christmas – the parties, the feasting, the exchange of gifts, the carolers out in the streets whose voices now make you cringe and reach for your headsets – all these have become financial burdens that most of us will probably be glad to get rid of.
Christmas, once hailed as a beacon of hope for the new year, has become one of those irritable occasions one can’t wait to get over with. I’m sure that by the time the last visitor is out of the door and the leftovers have been packed up in the fridge and the speakers have been turned off, most of us will probably sigh with relief. A day of special torture has ended; tomorrow we’ll all be back to the regular torture that is called everyday life.
And if you think this phenomenon of "post-holiday blues" is a product of the present times, it has actually become part and parcel of almost every holiday here in the Philippines. Consider this passage from Jose Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere,” describing the “post-fiesta” sadness the people of the fictional town of San Diego experienced:
“The people of the town have again found, as in every other year, that their treasury is poorer, that they have worked, sweated, and stayed awake much without really amusing themselves, without gaining any new friends, and, in a word, that they have dearly bought their dissipation and their headaches. But this matters nothing, for the same will be done next year, the same the coming century, since it has always been the custom.” - Chapter XLII, Noli Me Tangere
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