Gawd. It still doesnt feel like Christmas for me.
- Lostwansoul
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How sad that even the most dreamy of my friends doesn't feel the spirit anymore. For the past several days, I've been hearing from others how bleak and colorless their holidays are. In G4M, the main issue still is how to get a boyfriend before the holy day comes. Visit the forums there and you will find stacks of threads such as "Samahan ng Malalamig ang Christmas Dito." or "Luking for Boyfriend before Christmas anyone?" etc. I wouldn't be surprised if I find such ads on Sunday such as Christmas Fuck or Christmas Orgy in that damned website.
In PEx, it's almost the same thing - except that people are more focused on the material aspect of Christmas rather than the carnal or pseudo-intimate concept of the holidays. Simply check the forums and you will discover how profitable and entrepreneur-friendly the season is. If the people aren't talking about the best malls to shop in town - which will go most likely to 168 Divisoria, they are exchanging ideas as to what's the best (material) gift they could ever recieve this Christmas day.
---
When one gets extremely saturated with the crap happening in online forums, one could simply switch mediums and instead enjoy the sights on television. However it seems like the subjects people are talking in the internet were just spin offs from the media most people are tuned in. Since TV provides the visual stimuli to inspire or discourage people to "celebrate" the holidays, a program may feature gift suggestions or new fads consumers are in to this year. Last Sunday, Balitang K had a theme called 'White Christmas." One segment featured how the rich and affluent folks spend their free time decorating their homes in a stateside manner. Some nights ago, another program featured some brisk businesses offering gift-wrapping services for 'busy and lazy people who have no time to wrap their own gifts.' While its clients defend that they resort to these services to make their presents feel more special, I feel that in doing so, they take away whatever personal there is in a gift you will give to someone.
The examples I mentioned above are just images of how material and commercial our Christmas have become. If one feels to be more pragmatic about the holidays, there's always the news that would remind us of the real lives of people who would spend the season with nothing - families whose houses were burned to cinders in Muntinlupa two evenings ago, landslide victims whose houses and decomposing family members remain buried under meters of Lahar in Albay, Chin- Chin Gutierrez' suffering from second degree burns as she saves her ill mother from their burning house in Quezon City and many others.
Of course, they also show the heroism and Bayanihan spirit that resides in us. The news of caravans full of relief goods being sent to the Bicol Region and elsewhere makes everyone who have already lost their hope believe again, even for just a span of days. But truth remains, when you match these depressing realities to the incessant materialism and commercialism that is still prevailing during this season; when you hear pickpockets and robbers preying on consumers and companies whose only desire is to give their employees' salaries; and when you see more poverty-stricken dirty persons begging on the streets amidst the background of colorful Christmas Lights and bagsak-presyo RTW goods in Recto,
One can't help but wonder where did the magical and fairy-tale like memories of earlier Christmas go.
---
I could spend an entry or two just to write down some of my most cherished Christmas memories during childhood. The memories of playing Patintero under the blanket of twinkling million stars in my aunt's subdivision in Paranaque at the middle of a power outage is still fresh in my mind. I could also still remember how my aunts spent the entire evening preparing the Noche Buena, which lately, has been replaced by dishes ordered in advance elsewhere.
My friend is right about one thing: Indeed, the celebration these days are not the same as the Christmas we enjoyed when we were just children. December came and will pass as if a storm went by blowing everything away - this time piles of gift wrappers and boxes instead of fallen trees and leaves littering the streets. And how ironic that the more we try to embrace the older spirit of the holidays by clinging more to modern ways of commercialism - where everything is almost within the grasp of our hands depending on what our pockets could afford, the farther we're thrown back from our ideal Christmas we cherished deeply so much.
I told Lostwansoul earlier that the reason why many people never really felt the spirit of Christmas coming is because things are so much coated by shallowness that the essence itself was lost to technology. I guess I was right in a certain degree with my answers, but looking at what I really cherished most about Christmas, it is the things that are intangible I want back. Like everyone, I'm caught with its material aspects too. I'd be contributing to the destruction of environment by buying unnecessary embellishments to personalize my own gifts. December turns me into a raging consumer, spending a chunk of my fortune giving gifts to others.
Hoping to get even just a mere speck of the Christmas of my childhood, which for some reasons I could never achieve no matter what I do.
There is something very different about these days' holidays. And like the imitation goods that were smuggled from China, it has become too impersonal and artificial that our human spirit cannot see its deeper meaning anymore.
- Lostwansoul
---
How sad that even the most dreamy of my friends doesn't feel the spirit anymore. For the past several days, I've been hearing from others how bleak and colorless their holidays are. In G4M, the main issue still is how to get a boyfriend before the holy day comes. Visit the forums there and you will find stacks of threads such as "Samahan ng Malalamig ang Christmas Dito." or "Luking for Boyfriend before Christmas anyone?" etc. I wouldn't be surprised if I find such ads on Sunday such as Christmas Fuck or Christmas Orgy in that damned website.
In PEx, it's almost the same thing - except that people are more focused on the material aspect of Christmas rather than the carnal or pseudo-intimate concept of the holidays. Simply check the forums and you will discover how profitable and entrepreneur-friendly the season is. If the people aren't talking about the best malls to shop in town - which will go most likely to 168 Divisoria, they are exchanging ideas as to what's the best (material) gift they could ever recieve this Christmas day.
---
When one gets extremely saturated with the crap happening in online forums, one could simply switch mediums and instead enjoy the sights on television. However it seems like the subjects people are talking in the internet were just spin offs from the media most people are tuned in. Since TV provides the visual stimuli to inspire or discourage people to "celebrate" the holidays, a program may feature gift suggestions or new fads consumers are in to this year. Last Sunday, Balitang K had a theme called 'White Christmas." One segment featured how the rich and affluent folks spend their free time decorating their homes in a stateside manner. Some nights ago, another program featured some brisk businesses offering gift-wrapping services for 'busy and lazy people who have no time to wrap their own gifts.' While its clients defend that they resort to these services to make their presents feel more special, I feel that in doing so, they take away whatever personal there is in a gift you will give to someone.
The examples I mentioned above are just images of how material and commercial our Christmas have become. If one feels to be more pragmatic about the holidays, there's always the news that would remind us of the real lives of people who would spend the season with nothing - families whose houses were burned to cinders in Muntinlupa two evenings ago, landslide victims whose houses and decomposing family members remain buried under meters of Lahar in Albay, Chin- Chin Gutierrez' suffering from second degree burns as she saves her ill mother from their burning house in Quezon City and many others.
Of course, they also show the heroism and Bayanihan spirit that resides in us. The news of caravans full of relief goods being sent to the Bicol Region and elsewhere makes everyone who have already lost their hope believe again, even for just a span of days. But truth remains, when you match these depressing realities to the incessant materialism and commercialism that is still prevailing during this season; when you hear pickpockets and robbers preying on consumers and companies whose only desire is to give their employees' salaries; and when you see more poverty-stricken dirty persons begging on the streets amidst the background of colorful Christmas Lights and bagsak-presyo RTW goods in Recto,
One can't help but wonder where did the magical and fairy-tale like memories of earlier Christmas go.
---
I could spend an entry or two just to write down some of my most cherished Christmas memories during childhood. The memories of playing Patintero under the blanket of twinkling million stars in my aunt's subdivision in Paranaque at the middle of a power outage is still fresh in my mind. I could also still remember how my aunts spent the entire evening preparing the Noche Buena, which lately, has been replaced by dishes ordered in advance elsewhere.
My friend is right about one thing: Indeed, the celebration these days are not the same as the Christmas we enjoyed when we were just children. December came and will pass as if a storm went by blowing everything away - this time piles of gift wrappers and boxes instead of fallen trees and leaves littering the streets. And how ironic that the more we try to embrace the older spirit of the holidays by clinging more to modern ways of commercialism - where everything is almost within the grasp of our hands depending on what our pockets could afford, the farther we're thrown back from our ideal Christmas we cherished deeply so much.
I told Lostwansoul earlier that the reason why many people never really felt the spirit of Christmas coming is because things are so much coated by shallowness that the essence itself was lost to technology. I guess I was right in a certain degree with my answers, but looking at what I really cherished most about Christmas, it is the things that are intangible I want back. Like everyone, I'm caught with its material aspects too. I'd be contributing to the destruction of environment by buying unnecessary embellishments to personalize my own gifts. December turns me into a raging consumer, spending a chunk of my fortune giving gifts to others.
Hoping to get even just a mere speck of the Christmas of my childhood, which for some reasons I could never achieve no matter what I do.
There is something very different about these days' holidays. And like the imitation goods that were smuggled from China, it has become too impersonal and artificial that our human spirit cannot see its deeper meaning anymore.
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