The house fronts of the poor burgeon with paper stars in the most appalling color combinations, and they are illuminated in the evening with an almost criminal contempt for the fire hazards involved. There are other lanterns, too ― gay parodies of birds, beasts and politicians ― whose recondite relevance to the holy season entirely escapes the foreigner.
But it is the family Crib which he will find most reprehensible. Here are no polished figurines artistically arranged within a stable of faultless Gothic. As a matter of fact, it is not a Crib at all, but a "Belen," which is Spanish for Bethlehem. The idea, apparently, is not merely to represent the stable where Christ was born, but the surrounding countryside, if not the whole of Asia Minor. Needless to say, not the slightest attempt is made at historical and topographical accuracy.
On an ample table or sand-box hills and valleys, groves and lanes are strewn with a carefree abandon calculated to terrify a geologist; but all the hills stoop down and all the lanes lead up to a little palm-leaf house where the Shepherds find their King. Only these are not shepherds, but farmers and fishermen, summoned by the angelic messenger from the quiet rice fields and the surrounding surf of Leyte and Luzon. Arrogantly bestriding the highest hill is Herod's palace, a cool white country mansion such as an "hacendero" might build, and at the front door waits the red Packard in which Herod goes to town.
But the toy car is not the only toy in this amazing Bethlehem. Rubber swans preen themselves on glass ponds; the Three Wise Men lead carabaos instead of camels; and they are escorted, like as not, by tin soldiers in the uniforms of World War I. After taking in all this, our bewildered stranger is no longer even surprised to discover that the child of the house has laid the tracks of his toy train to pass by the nipa hut where Christ was born.
The children, in fact, have often the deciding vote as to what is to go into the "Belen," since it is laid out mainly for their delight and their instruction.
Now you will say that our history is all wrong, and our geography lunar if not lunatic; and you will be right. Christ was born in Palestine, not Pampanga; Herod never road a Packard, much less a red one; and, in the first place, what in Heaven's name is Herod's palace doing there at all? You may well ask.
It is barely possible, however, that in our ignorance we give expression, by a kind of happy accident, to a very great truth. For Christ was not born for the people of one land or of one age only. He was born for the men and women of every land and age. There is, then, a deep and even mystic fitness in surrounding the Crib of the Savior with everything that is to us familiar and dear ― the contours and furniture of our own land, the symbols of our work and play, everything that for us spells home. For if Christ chose to be born homeless, it was that He may be everywhere at home.
And it is this "homeyness" (if the term may be allowed) that characterizes the Filipino celebration of Christmas. That is why the foreigner finds it so homely, in the pejorative sense of the term, in the sense of being ungainly and undignified. If our welcome to the Savior leans towards the boisterous and naive, it is doubtless because we belong as a nation to the rustic band of the Shepherds rather than to the splendid retinue of Kings.
― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.
Jesuit Seminary News (New York Province)
December 1947
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| Illustration by Pablo Amorsolo of Alvaro Martinez's Reminiscenses of Philippine Christmas. December 1930. Philippine Magazine. |
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