No home for Christmas

ONE CAROL that makes me cry is I’ll be home for Christmas. Whoever sings it, Bing Crosby or Michael Buble, Whitney Houston or Josh Groban.

Just the first strains are more than enough to work up the tear ducts –

I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love
Even more than I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back
I promise you…
Thoughts of toiling fathers in the desert sand, of seafaring husbands amid the winter seas; of care-giving mothers in some retirement home, of child-rearing sisters in some high-rise flats – all of them longing, pining --    
I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Aye, presents under the tree, but not so much – indeed, not ever – for snow and mistletoe. As for simbang gabi and bibingka, puto bumbong, suman and tamales. And – above all – family --   

Christmas eve will find you
Where the love light gleams
At the Misa de Aguinaldo singing Gloria in excelsis welcoming with the angels and the shepherds the birth of the Savior. And then, from the humblest hovels to the grandest mansions, the whole family, in prayerful thanksgiving, partaking of the noche buena feast.   

I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.

The overseas Filipino worker sings. And I just can’t help but cry with him.

Still, he can dream of some homecoming.

Alas, that is not so with the folk uprooted, displaced by typhoon Pablo.

Home for Christmas is now all in the heart, pained memories of what once was.

Of them, what can we sing?

  

X'mas spoiler

HEAR YE, hear ye. The City of San Fernando calls: “All roads lead again to Robinsons Starmills Pampanga on December 15 for the annual Giant Lantern Festival pitting aesthetic and technical skills of the city’s acclaimed lantern makers.

Also called “Ligligan Parul”, the much-awaited event centers on a competition that has been a showcase of the 104-year-old tradition of lantern making in the City. 
The festival attracts thousands of tourists, both local and foreign, to an evening of kaleidoscopic displays of light and color from giant Christmas lanterns produced by craftsmen from San Fernando’s barangays aiming for the coveted “best lantern” award…”
Showcasing tradition. Pitting aesthetic and technical skills of craftsmen. Attracting thousands of foreign and local tourists. 

The City of San Fernando’s Giant Lantern Festival has long arrived as the signature festival not only of the city but of the whole Kapampangan race indeed. Though its sense – the very reason for the season it celebrates – is dead and, not so much for the worse, done with.

With its grand spectacle of flashing multi-colored lights, the Giant Lantern Festival reduced, aye, trivialized the Christmas Star.

Pray, who still know the meaning of the Christmas lantern? Tell, who cares?

I remember my high school theology professor – the then-Rev. Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto – lecturing that the Christmas lantern took after the Star of Bethlehem that pointed to where the Christ was born and thereby guided both lowly shepherds and majestic magi to the manger.

Hence – the good Apu Ceto explained – wherever the Christmas lantern is hoisted, posted or hung, there the Christ is, there His love is. The lantern being the Star’s representation.
Thus, of all the symbols of Christmas – from mistletoes and Christmas trees to Santa Claus and the snowman – it is the lantern that has the greatest, if not the only, theological value – the sublime symbolism of love, the greatest manifestation of God’s love born man to redeem mankind.

Are we even remotely aware of this when we ooh and aah in wonderful glee at the giant lanterns’ kaleidoscopic plays?

“And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon gods the made…” Simon and Garfunkel sounding as prophets there.
A Christmas past I feel, writing all about this? Unarguably, making myself the miserly Scrooge or the wily Grinch stealing the X’mas present of frenzied shopping rush causing all those monstrous traffic jams around the malls, of compulsive consumption, offered as it were, at capitalism’s unholy shrines, of the attendant cacophony of sounds – from the consumer noise to the piped-in carols – fading below the din of tinkling cash registers, sweet, sweet music to the Forbes’ listers ears.

Without the Christ, there’s only X’mas utterly secularized. There’s only X’mas crassly commercialized.

Call me the sanctimonious killjoy, the X’mas spoiler. 

So we sing “Joy to the world” with all our hearts.
So what lord has come to us?

Celebrating Pampanga

A WORKING title of the book-in-mind, sub-headed: Faith. Food. Fiesta. It’s a dream – grand, but hopefully, unimpossible – of encapsulating the Kapampangan character, if not the very soul, in a coffee table book.

Faith. Sermons in stone, searing the heart, stirring the soul. So we wrote of the churches in Pampanga in an accompanying verse to our photo exhibit Visita Iglesia last March. As much as edifices of faith, our centuries-old churches have become tourist attractions with the grandiosity of their façades, with the magnificence of their retablos, evoking in the beholder the grandest cathedrals of Europe.

It was in 1572 that the Augustinian friars planted the faith in Lubao, spreading throughout the province and up and across the expanse of the central and northern regions of Luzon.

Consecrated to St. Augustine, the Lubao parish church though damaged in the last war and in some calamities has been restored to its old glory and assumes its place among the so-called legacy churches of Pampanga.

Two of these old churches have been declared by the National Museum as  National Cultural Treasures --  the Sta. Monica Parish Church in Minalin in August 2011, and the St. James the Apostle Parish Church in Betis, Guagua in November 2001.

The other “churches of antiquity” attracting pilgrims and tourists alike are the Holy Rosary  in Angeles City; Sta. Lucia in Sasmuan; Sta. Rita in Sta. Rita; San Guillermo in Bacolor; San Luis Gonzaga in San Luis; St. Peter the Apostle in Apalit; San Bartolome in Magalang; and the  Metropolitan Cathedral in the City of San Fernando.

A brief essay on the churches – to be penned by Lord Francis Musni, foremost Kapampangan scholar on the subject – will make the most appropriate introduction to the Faith section of the book.

Food. Pampanga prides itself as the culinary capital of the Philippines. There’s just some ingredient in the Kapampangan food that distinguishes it from any other in the country, be it from the Spanish heirloom recipes for morcon and galantina  to the exotic adobong camaru, betute, sisig and binulo to the ambrosiac buro.

Already, the mouth waters at the mere thought of these dishes, how much more with the photographs of Peter Alagos and Deng Pangilinan illustrative of a most delectable essay from Robbie Tantingco!

Fiesta. The resultant mix of faith and food. Of all the provinces, arguably, Pampanga has the most towns, barrios and sitios named after saints, not to mention subdivisions and housing developments.

The feast days of the saints make joyous celebrations of thanksgiving – for good harvests, for salvation from calamities – and cause for homecomings and family reunions, necessitating grand banquets, that usually last for days – from the start of novenas, to ante-visperas, to the day of the fiesta itself.

From there evolved festivals that celebrate each the town’s peculiarity or product. Thus, the Giant Lantern Festival in the City of San Fernando – and the Tugak Festival and Good Friday crucifixion rites too; the Ibon-Ebon in Candaba; Duman and Suman in Sta. Rita; Sampaguita in Lubao; Aguman Sandok in Minalin; Caraga in Mabalacat; Tigtigan, Terakan in Angeles City.

Religious-themed festivals have remained though in Apalit with the fluvial procession on St. Peter’s feast day; Sabuaga honouring the Virgin Mary in Sto. Tomas on Easter Sunday; Kuraldal in Sasmuan on the feast of Sta. Lucia; and  Makatapak in Bacolor, as a form of purification in the wake of the devastation wrought on the town by the Mount Pinatubo eruptions.

Faith. Food. Fiesta. Pampanga, but of course, is more than that.

So I have in mind a separate section for Etcetera, in the language: At Miya-yaliwa Pa.

Eco-Tourism takes principal stage here: Nabuclod in the highlands of Floridablanca with its zip line, and the magnificent view all-around. The wetlands of Candaba for bird watching. Gintong Pakpak at the foot of majestic Mount Arayat. Miyamit Falls in Porac. Haduan Falls in Mabalacat City. Puning Hot Springs in Sapang Bato, Angeles City.

There. Celebrating Pampanga: Faith. Food. Fiesta. More than an interesting read, it is a journey through the Kapampangan character.

Time to look for some kind Kapampangan souls to make the project roll.   

A noble man

OVER A hearty breakfast with the Society of Pampanga Columnists last week at Cong Tarzan Lazatin’s jungle base, the talk revolved around the host’s long years of service to the people of Pampanga, staring as representative of the first district in 1987 until 1998, moving to Angeles City hall until 2007, back to the House in 2010 and now looking at the city hall anew.

Talk of legacy here, the astute Ashley Manabat commented, heartily seconded by the fully-fed Macky Pangan.

Thought I of another Lazatin legacy that preceded, aye, that birthed this one. Perfect coincidence too that rummaging through my files later, I found this Zona Libre column in The Voice published in its November 21-27, 1993 issue – 19 years to the day of the breakfast. Is there some message from the beyond here?        

A noble man

AN ANOMALY in the Philippine political setting: the absolute antithesis to the patented Filipino politico. He abhorred pomposity, shunned power, disdained aggrandizement.

He was fiercely loyal to his God; staunchly defended, cared for his people; loved deeply his city.

He was a patrician in every sense of the word. Born to the local aristocracy and bred in that class that gave the world the despised caciques, the heartless hacienderos and the vainglorious bourgeoisie. In that world, yet he was never of that world.

He loved the soil and its tiller, carrying on a lifetime affair with the grains, the beasts of burden, and the trees. Marxist or otherwise, he was a “traitor” to his class.

His ultimate “betrayal” monumentalized with the foundation of his school that catered to the bright and promising sons and daughters of the dispossessed, empowering them with respect, the dignity and the means with which to rise from the curse of want to which the feudal system condemned their forebears.

It was not a stroke of gimmickry that his election token came to be a big red heart. It came from a grateful people who swept him to the Pampanga Capitol in the ‘50s, to the Angeles City hall in the ‘70s and the halls of the Batasang Pambansa – even as a septuagenarian bagets – in the ‘80s.

This is not to say that he never lost a battle. Magnanimous in victory, he was also most gracious in his political defeats.

But the principles by which he lived were unbending. As ramrod-straight as his posture. As hard as the kamagong cane which he periodically wielded to assert hizzoner’s authority over recalcitrant lawbreakers and recidivists.

A man of peace, he did not find any need for even a single guard. Moving around, even at the height of the Huk movement, by his lonesome. Why, he was said to have routinely taken public transport going to his office at the Capitol.

An administration devoid of the crudest plan to rehabilitate a devastated constituency and self-satisfied with empty mouthings of Philippines 2000 ought to be shamed by the reality of an Angeles Year 2000 Plan, crafted at the behest of this visionary in the mid-‘70s. (I should know, being a representative of a national government agency at the Regional Development Council then, where the plan was presented, approved and incorporated to the Central Luzon Medium Term or 25-Year Plan).

The pettiness and inanities of local officials in their vain efforts to exude power find glaring magnification when ranged against the simplicity of this man.

He was a millionaire many times over, but on his induction as director of the Philippine Air Lines in 1987, he promptly took the bus to Manila after finding his old reliable car had broken down.

While the crop of local raiders, er, leaders, would rather die than get caught riding in something less than a Galant Super Saloon or a Vanette, he regularly made the rounds in a battered pick-up truck. Sic transit Gloria mundi?

 It is often said, and said so rightly, that a tribute is always inadequate. It can never encompass the true greatness of the man. It can only focus on what was in the man and his deed that touched the tribute-giver deeply.

Many men, even the few good ones, enter politics, get enmeshed in its corrupting power, and leave maculated beyond moral recognition. His was a perversion of that routine.

Don Rafael Lazatin entered politics and ennobled it. Only goodness followed his  long political trail. There impacts Apung Feleng’s greatness.

At his burial, I, who have met him less than ten times, and perhaps one he would not even remember, was moved to shed a tear or two.

Not so much for one man’s passing, but for the extinction of a most noble breed. Of whom, this city, this province, and this country are forever deprived.

 Xxxxx

FOR THE record, I know of no other elected official ever to achieve the triple crown in local politics – governor, congressman/assemblyman, city mayor – than Don Rafael Lazatin.      

            

 

O Palestine!

ALLAHU AKBAR!

Five days ago – November 29 – the UN General Assembly voted to grant “non-member observer State” status to Palestine. A resounding affirmation -- 138 in favour to nine against – led by the US and Israeli, but of course, with 41 abstentions – of the legitimacy of Palestine as a state, no matter its denial by a few bullies in the family of nations.

“We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a State established years ago, and that is Israel; rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of the State that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine,” the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Assembly before the vote.

Abbas noted that the world was being asked today to undertake a significant step in the process of rectifying the “unprecedented historical injustice” inflicted on the Palestinian people since 1948.

“Your support for our endeavour today,” he said, “will send a promising message – to millions of Palestinians on the land of Palestine, in the refugee camps both in the homeland and the Diaspora, and to the prisoners struggling for freedom in Israel’s prisons – that justice is possible and that there is a reason to be hopeful and that the peoples of the world do not accept the continuation of the occupation.”

Serendipitously, the UN recognition came on the very day of the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People established in 1977 to  mark the date in 1947 when the Assembly adopted a resolution partitioning then-mandated Palestine into two States, one Jewish and one Arab.

But sadly, birthed only one state – that of Israel, Palestine still at its embryonic stage until this time, ever-threatened with abortion.

It is good that the Philippines stood tall – this time – in favour of the Palestinian state.

“The Philippines supports Palestine’s quest for self-rule and self-determination, and we hope that one day an independent Palestine may live side by side in peace with its neighbors.” So was Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Raul Hernandez quoted as saying.

The Philippine vote, in a sense, served as a rectification of that monumental error committed in 1947.

Sometime in 1989, there was lobbying for the Philippines to recognize the Palestinian state. Here is something dug out of my files of that period finding relevance again – from my Offline column in Headline: Manila, September 19, 1989.   

IF ONLY to expiate for the historical error it committed in the partition vote at the UN on November 29, 1947 that effected the creation of the State of Israel and consequently rejected and ejected the then 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs from the land they nurtured for seven centuries, the Philippines should grant immediate recognition of the Palestinian state.

Of that period, here is what Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre wrote in their monumental book O Palestine:

“During that crucial interlude (i.e. when the pro-partition votes were endangered) four nations opposed to partition, Greece, Haiti, Liberia and the Philippines were subjected to a deluge of diplomatic pressures and menaces. The United States, again acting on the instigation of the White House, threw the full impact of its tremendous prestige behind the Jewish cause. Two justices of the United States Supreme Court personally cabled Philippine President Manuel A. Roxas warning that the ‘Philippines will isolate millions and millions of American friends and supporters if they continue in their efforts to vote against partition.’ Twenty six senators cabled Roxas and urged him to change his nation’s vote. The Philippine ambassador was summoned to a blunt but intensive briefing at the White House. Finally, Roxas ordered his delegation ‘in the higher national interest’ to switch its vote from against to for partition.”        

There lies the Philippines’ role as an accomplice in an international crime against a people who are up to now suffering from that “monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of crime they had not commited.” 

The Palestinians were made to suffer for the crimes against the Jews by white supremacist Adolf Hitler. Now they suffer under the Jews, who have taken practically even their very birthright.

Rather than now question Senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani’s meeting with Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, government must increase its efforts to work for the recognition of Palestine as a number of nations in the Third World and in the Non-Aligned Movement has done.

Israeli and American propaganda has invariably imaged the Palestinians as blood-thirsty terrorists – amply amplified by local running dogs of the CIA and the Mossad. In the Middle Easter context however, who are the real terrorists?

News reports on the almost two-year intifada show Palestinian “terror” stones matched against the Jews’ “righteous bullets.” The number of casualties: less than a score among the Jews, some victimized by stray bullets from their own kind; hundreds of Palestinians dead, thousands maimed and tens of thousands rendered homeless. He who kills and maims more is the source, not the recipient, of terror. That is natural law.

In the history of terrorism, Libya’s Moammar Qadaffi, US-pictured as the ultimate terrorist, would look like a boy scout ranged with former Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin during the latter’s Irgun days.

Headed by Begin, Irgun and its offshoot, the Stern Gang were composed of desperadoes whose creed for the establishment of Israel started and ended with the gun, as imprinted in their escutcheon of a rifle thrust aloft by a clenched fist ringed with the motto “Only Thus.”

Some of the tamer activities of Irgun were the killing of more than 300 mostly innocent victims, according to Collins-Lapierre, “like the 90 Arabs, Jews and Britons they had killed…in the destruction of a wing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946.”

Continued the account: “they had shocked the world and outraged their fellow Jews by hanging two British sergeants, then booby-trapping their bodies, in reprisal for the execution of one of their members.”

The terrorism imputed on the Palestinians is but a concrete manifestation of nationalist aspirations no less different than those that laundhed the Philippine, even the American, Revolutions. That which is being done to them by the Jews is not simply a political praxis of the biblical “eye for an eye” but an Israeli national policy of aggression fully backed by the United States, the international patron of fascist reaction to all nationalist uprisings in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, and in Palestine.

ALLAHU AKBAR!

In 1987, I was among a select group of Pampanga mediamen inducted into an International Solidarity for the Liberation of Palestine by the group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by George Habash, a rival of Arafat.

In fitting ceremonies, of prayers and expressions of brotherhood, we were inducted into the hattah, the Palestinian headscarf, as a symbol of that very solidarity – “as you wear the hattah, you are one with us in our struggles as we are one with you in yours…” Taking those words to heart, I have worn the hattah ever since, in all its colorful variations in the Arabian kaffiyeh even. 

So in solidarity with my Palestinian brethren, I find cause for celebration in Palestine: non-member observer State at the UN.

But the struggle continues until...insha’Allah, the independent Republic of Palestine comes into being.