A Different Christmas Story

By Rolo B. Cena

Random

Dumaguete Star Informer

18 December 2016

Indeed, a smoldering wick:  His grip of the weakest eases the humankind no strongest of powers produced by mortals can do.  “He is,” he quipped!  And at least, he believes in this.

He said he never had a good Christmas.  He spent his childhood in a brim of poverty that extras outside of the three-times-a-day meals became a luxury.   Theirs was a survival of the fittest that outsmarting the superfluities the “rich and the famous” of his prime enjoyed or were born to enjoy was next to impossible.

In a brief encounter with him one day, he narrated that when Christmas comes, he fears:  For one, he, along with his siblings and mother, spent his Christmas with only the staple on the table.  Two, he spent his Christmas with tears.  Three, he spent his Christmas with dreams.

Fear is an anticipation of pain, that’s what I told him.  In the season of advent, people across race, culture and faith find it absurd to convey fear instead of hope if one were to anchor on the true meaning of Christ’s birth.

Celebrating Christmas with the staples on the table had become the tradition in the family.  His father, a fisherman, earned meager income of survival.  His father’s catch would be divided into two; one half went to the market and the other to the table.  The proceeds of the sale, depending on the scientifically annoying supply-and-demand rationale to poverty, would answer the whole day’s three meals.  That small-scale economics would satisfy their Christmas with porridge, fish paksiw and spring water. Occasionally, a loaf of bread, a can of margarine and Pepsi would make a wonderful Christmas.

Fear is the anticipation of emptiness.  In this time of the year, the feeling of “nothingness” should be ruled out and filled in with actions to fulfill, which is the underlying meaning of Christ’s existence.  And he knew that.

Celebrating Christmas with tears was the most inexplicable ritual in his life, he mused.  When he was a kid, most of the time he spent Christmas with his brothers and sisters – and with his mother.  He never had experienced celebrating it with his father.  As far as he could recall, he would accept long-term fishing contracts for bigger catch and for a little-higher-than-the-meager pay.  Celebrating Christmas with an absentee father would mean defeating the purpose why Christians would celebrate Christmas with Joseph, Mary and Jesus.  The bible does not tell us otherwise.

He said he was and is a dreamer.  When Christmas would come, he would avoid fear and forget emptiness by dreaming the exact opposites of the realities he experienced for more than five decades now.  Forward-looking to the future, he would continue to see his self and those of his siblings as persons of stature worthy of emulation – with accolades hanging on the walls of their structures that for a long time insisted to hold that thing called “home,” a temporary reprieve from fear, tears and emptiness.

Through his golden years, he humbly narrated that he’d mitigated fear to make his own niche, at least in the industry where he excels, though erratically.  He has his own family to take care of and spend Christmas with.  At his age now, he still feels occasional fears, unleashes occasional tears but dreams most of the time.  He can’t help but look back at the porridge, fish paksiw and spring water for Christmas.

When at the height of his career, he celebrates Christmas with his family sumptuously and when it is at its lowest, he does it with the classic porridge, fish paksiw and spring water.

He shared one best lesson he learned through life:  When you are full, you have lots of friends – even acquaintances become friends; they dine and merry with you.  When you are empty, you lose your friends.  Worse, they become your attackers, your predators.  They don’t answer messages; they cut phone calls.

He hates Christmas when it comes:  He locks up himself in a room and cries his fears and emptiness out.  Literally and figuratively, he never feels happy during Christmas.  He acknowledges it’s weird and in fact wishes to re-write history and create different story of His birth.  He smiles but his eyes ooze an altered tale.

Nevertheless, he inspires his children through and through.  As the head of the family, he grips all of them like one bundle of weaker wicks creating a centrally stronger one that gives the most blazing of all lights illuminating his household.  By far, he is an example of a really startling smoldering wick I could ever imagine.

Sadly though, his is an exceptional story.  And all Christmas stories do come in varying colors:  Others painted their rhetoric with cheerfully dashing red; others elaborately adorned their narratives with fully lavishing gold or actively rejuvenating green or even purely inspiring white, or deeply moving blue.  Uniquely individual!

That was his story, a truly different one!  Do you have your own Christmas story to tell?