Merry Cluttered Christmas

 
By Carlos A. Arnaldo
Manila
December 14, 2019
 
 


Since early October this year, the whole Philippines has been cluttered with Christmas decorations and  street lights, stores glittering with gifts and cheery words, and lately our native parol in multifarious colors flashing for attention. And this, our parol, is perhaps the only real symbol of Christmas, otherwise cluttered today with messages of buy, buy buy. And after a rich and filling Noche Buena, most of us have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas.

Let me call from his solemn grave, Ashiong, who when alive wrote and spoke with such simple but clear words and, I think, really picked out the true meaning of this season. Ashiong is Horacio de la Costa, SJ, known historian and most famous as a simple history teacher.  Sixty years ago, in the old Ateneo chapel on Padre Faura street, Manila, he told his story of Christmas in his ‘upside down way,’ and he started with our parol! 

“This is the night when shepherds wake to the song of angels; when the earth has a star for a satellite; when wise men go on a fool's errand, bringing gifts to a Prince they have not seen, in a country they do not know. . . .

“This is the night when one small donkey bears on his back the weight of the world's desire, and an ox plays host to the Lord of the heaven. This is the night we are told to seek our king not in a palace but a stable; and although we have stood here, year after year, as our fathers before us, the wonder has not faded nor will it ever fade; the wonder of that moment when we push open the little door, and enter, and entering find in the arms of a Mother who is a Virgin, a Baby who is God. . . .

“That is why our Christian faith is the faith in the unexpected, a religion of surprise. Now more than ever, living in times so troubled, facing a future so uncertain, we need such faith. We need it for ourselves and we need it to give others. We must remind the world that if Christmas comes in the dead of winter, it is that there may be an Easter in the spring.”

The thunderous and irrefutable truth about Christmas is summarized in that little wooden cradle, under a bright star like our parol,  where God became a baby!