“Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” the carol goes.
Please define “merry little.” Buying teeny-weeny Christmas gifts? Christmasy gold dust in your hair? A piece of grape? One shot of tequila on Christmas Eve? The elves without Santa? Queso with no bola? Mistle sans the toe? For mistletoe, that is. And for this year, you can have only this: “On the first day of Christmas / My true love gave to me / A partridge in a pear tree”?
With gas prices soaring so high they make other prices soar to infinity and beyond, “merry little” is sage advice. Buy only the basics: food, clothing, shelter.
Food should be nutrient-dense, and not the kind whose ingredients need an encyclopedia to sate your curiosity.
Buying clothes can be addictive for those who treat shopping as therapy. And having many clothes can be stressful. Too many choices. Whew. No wonder Mark Zuckerberg wears the same gray T-shirt daily. Of course he has lots of them, but they all look exactly the same.
Steve Jobs also wore the same black mock turtleneck daily.
Inspired by cartoon characters? Hmm. Look at Donald Duck. Mickey Mouse. SpongeBob SquarePants. Dexter. Charlie Brown. Bart Simpson. Nancy. Sluggo. Popeye. Porky Pig. The Minions.
I used to wear only navy or black when I was fat. And then I lost weight.
Shelter can also go out of proportion: the bigger the house, the harder to maintain it.
There was this mansion where I attended a party once upon a time. It had a powder room for guests, so I went there, and was shocked to see these: cockroaches, spiders, cobwebs, and a toilet bowl filled with icky green water. Eww. It resembled bathrooms in horror movies. I guess it had morphed into the mansion’s Netherland and no one cared to lock its door.
If this were October, I could have dismissed it as the mansion owner’s clever way of celebrating Halloween. But it wasn’t October, and I wasn’t there for a Halloween party.
In Pinas, “ber”—September, October, November, December—means Christmas songs. Which are now constantly playing in stores and malls with the hope you’ll start your Christmas shopping today.
But the Pinoy sometimes waits for Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day to be over before filling his house with Christmas decors.
My sister, Joan, was not that kind of Pinoy. She loved putting up Christmas decors and would start buying them the moment stores had them on display.
I, on the other hand, am the type who’d buy a Santa cookie jar, eat its contents, and display the jar as the house’s one and only homage to Christmas.
Oops. No, I don’t eat cookies anymore. Ah, hehe.
This year, though, I’m planning to add one more decor: a belen, a nativity scene. Operative word: planning.
I wonder if I’m the only one practicing a minimalist Christmas these days because even Jose Mari Chan’s carols are not trending anymore. Or they still are but I haven’t noticed?
His “Christmas in Our Hearts” has become so popular that even if only its first word, “Whenever,” is played, any Pinoy can already guess the title in a “Name That Tune” contest.
