Pasko na! Kampanya na!
The first sign of Christmas in my apartment is a small white parol knitted by the mothers at Knitting Expedition in Uhaji, Ifugao. I’ve decided to Pasko-ize my place in stages this year; after that little parol maybe I’ll work on a centerpiece for my dining table this weekend. Slow by slow (dahan-dahan), as they say.
When I was a kid a real pine tree would take pride of place in the sala by early December (which, by today’s timeline, is really late; these last few years I put up the decorations right after All Saints’ Day). The tree exuded a wonderful pine scent and would shed needles that had to be swept up every morning. We had “snow” from a can sprayed on the branches. When we moved out of the old house in the family compound on San Rafael street we stopped having a live tree – I’m not sure why, maybe because by then we were no longer little kiddies awed by the office truck bringing in a real tree. In the house on Piña street we had a tall plastic tree – until one night it came crashing down into a tangled mess of branches and strings of lights, the ornaments smashed to smithereens. Since then we’ve not had a tree.
Since moving to a condo unit two decades ago the decorations have had to be scaled down. I bought a 12-inch tree made of coconut branches painted gold at a Negros trade fair. A friend gifted me one Christmas with a 24-inch gold-hued tree, which is still around but which I am repurposing this year into other forms of decoration.
Which brought me, my helpers and our dog Filemon Jr. to the Christmas store, Color It Christmas, down the street one not-so-rainy day a couple of weeks ago. It was originally the Tamilee store, but Tami Leung, the entrepreneur with the magic Christmas touch who founded Tamilee Industries 37 years ago, retired earlier this year. However, the store still exudes an over-the-top holiday mood with its fully-loaded Christmas trees and wall and table decor, certainly enough to make one start celebrating the happiest time of the year.
Christmas is big business, and not just here in the Philippines which prides itself – justifiably – as having the longest Christmas celebration in the world. The global Christmas decor industry was
