Banal Christmas
Banal Christmas
Updated 01:37am (Mla time) Dec 24, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the December 24, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
TONIGHT, before midnight, Filipinos will flock to Catholic churches across the archipelago to attend the penultimate Mass ending the novenary of early dawn Masses that started last Dec. 16. Strictly speaking, the Mass is not penultimate because Catholics are still mandated to go to a Christmas Day Mass tomorrow. But the midnight Mass tonight is a credible finis to the nine-day run-up to the birth of Christ that remarkably prefigures the long wait in the Old Testament for the birth of the Messiah.
Of course, the preparation for Christmas started long way before with the Catholic liturgy's lighting of the Advent candle wreath last month. The lighting symbolizes many things, among them, the vigilant anticipation of Christians for the coming of Christ.
But Filipinos have long ago anticipated Christmas, since the onset of September when radios started filling the airwaves with the first Christmas carols, a case of Christmas overeagerness. A sort of anticipation that borders on obsession.
But Philippine Christmas takes its most distinctive form at the start of December when the streets and establishments are festooned with lights that have become more and more ingenious through the years. Offices and schools start elaborate gift-giving practices, aside from the predictable parties. Corporations play Santa Claus by showering goodies on depressed communities and marginalized sectors. Giving becomes institutionalized, at least for a month.
But the practices that characterize the Filipino Christmas have become so common that they seem commonplace and banal. Such is the power of the practices to insinuate and integrate themselves into the season that their import has been lost in the hurly-burly of the celebration.
Even the altruism of Christmas is lost in the corporate do-goodism that has more and more become part of the bag of tricks of marketing men eager as always to exalt business and corporate virtue in another form of grating hardsell. There seems to be no end to commerce's remarkable facility to debase Christmas.
Meaningful Christmas
AND yet this year seems a particularly meaningful Christmas for the Philippines. The month started propitiously enough with destructive typhoons that flooded and laid waste to a wide swath of the archipelago's southeastern regions, displacing tens of thousands and killing hundreds. The death of theater great Zeneida Amador late last month, and the deaths this month of Fernando Poe Jr. and KC de Venecia, the last one tragically in a fire, have cast a pall of gloom in a season that is otherwise determined to make merry and cheer things up.
All these tragedies should compel us to reflect the meaning of the season and plumb its message and insights. This would require going beyond the tinsel and glitter of Christmas and reacquainting ourselves with its rituals that have become second nature to us, but which we have somehow transformed into rote in our eager rush to embrace commerce and materialism.
In the end, the meaning of Christmas is the same one that has been ingrained in us by the rituals and practices that the Spanish friar missionaries and the Church had in the past introduced and fostered in order to consolidate the faith. The practices are basically sacramental forms that symbolize and reflect in themselves the glory of God and God's fellowship with mankind in a world seemingly bereft of hope and vitality. The genius of the Spanish missionaries was to integrate these practices into the lifestyle of the Filipinos so that they would seem to form a seamless weave in the larger tapestry of Filipino religiosity.
Nevertheless, they are not mere pious practices. If the sacraments guided the native Filipinos from birth to grave, it is the same with these practices: they accompany the Filipinos through the vagaries of existence, endowing their lives with meaning, relevance, love and hope. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominican theologian and Doctor of the Church, has a phrase for it -- "grace builds on nature."
So what is the meaning of Christmas? We should go back to the lighting of the Advent candle. The practice is not a mere pious gesture. If the candle signifies and even sacramentalizes hope, its lighting is a prophetic act. It means that we are committed to keeping the flame of hope alive in a world that seems determined to go back to darkness. It's an act of faith, and in the context of the Filipinos' many-sided struggles, a subversive and defiant one.
Updated 01:37am (Mla time) Dec 24, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the December 24, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
TONIGHT, before midnight, Filipinos will flock to Catholic churches across the archipelago to attend the penultimate Mass ending the novenary of early dawn Masses that started last Dec. 16. Strictly speaking, the Mass is not penultimate because Catholics are still mandated to go to a Christmas Day Mass tomorrow. But the midnight Mass tonight is a credible finis to the nine-day run-up to the birth of Christ that remarkably prefigures the long wait in the Old Testament for the birth of the Messiah.
Of course, the preparation for Christmas started long way before with the Catholic liturgy's lighting of the Advent candle wreath last month. The lighting symbolizes many things, among them, the vigilant anticipation of Christians for the coming of Christ.
But Filipinos have long ago anticipated Christmas, since the onset of September when radios started filling the airwaves with the first Christmas carols, a case of Christmas overeagerness. A sort of anticipation that borders on obsession.
But Philippine Christmas takes its most distinctive form at the start of December when the streets and establishments are festooned with lights that have become more and more ingenious through the years. Offices and schools start elaborate gift-giving practices, aside from the predictable parties. Corporations play Santa Claus by showering goodies on depressed communities and marginalized sectors. Giving becomes institutionalized, at least for a month.
But the practices that characterize the Filipino Christmas have become so common that they seem commonplace and banal. Such is the power of the practices to insinuate and integrate themselves into the season that their import has been lost in the hurly-burly of the celebration.
Even the altruism of Christmas is lost in the corporate do-goodism that has more and more become part of the bag of tricks of marketing men eager as always to exalt business and corporate virtue in another form of grating hardsell. There seems to be no end to commerce's remarkable facility to debase Christmas.
Meaningful Christmas
AND yet this year seems a particularly meaningful Christmas for the Philippines. The month started propitiously enough with destructive typhoons that flooded and laid waste to a wide swath of the archipelago's southeastern regions, displacing tens of thousands and killing hundreds. The death of theater great Zeneida Amador late last month, and the deaths this month of Fernando Poe Jr. and KC de Venecia, the last one tragically in a fire, have cast a pall of gloom in a season that is otherwise determined to make merry and cheer things up.
All these tragedies should compel us to reflect the meaning of the season and plumb its message and insights. This would require going beyond the tinsel and glitter of Christmas and reacquainting ourselves with its rituals that have become second nature to us, but which we have somehow transformed into rote in our eager rush to embrace commerce and materialism.
In the end, the meaning of Christmas is the same one that has been ingrained in us by the rituals and practices that the Spanish friar missionaries and the Church had in the past introduced and fostered in order to consolidate the faith. The practices are basically sacramental forms that symbolize and reflect in themselves the glory of God and God's fellowship with mankind in a world seemingly bereft of hope and vitality. The genius of the Spanish missionaries was to integrate these practices into the lifestyle of the Filipinos so that they would seem to form a seamless weave in the larger tapestry of Filipino religiosity.
Nevertheless, they are not mere pious practices. If the sacraments guided the native Filipinos from birth to grave, it is the same with these practices: they accompany the Filipinos through the vagaries of existence, endowing their lives with meaning, relevance, love and hope. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominican theologian and Doctor of the Church, has a phrase for it -- "grace builds on nature."
So what is the meaning of Christmas? We should go back to the lighting of the Advent candle. The practice is not a mere pious gesture. If the candle signifies and even sacramentalizes hope, its lighting is a prophetic act. It means that we are committed to keeping the flame of hope alive in a world that seems determined to go back to darkness. It's an act of faith, and in the context of the Filipinos' many-sided struggles, a subversive and defiant one.
posted by Dante at 1:37 AM
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