The five months of Christmas

Netnet Camomot .

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me / A partridge in a pear tree.”

HERE in Pinas, that first day was Sept. 1, and the carol’s title would be The Five Months of Christmas. Or should that be The One Hundred Fifty-Three Days of Christmas? Gosh.

There’s no Christmas tree yet in this house with a view. And I guess the neighborhood is waiting for Halloween to be over, that’s when Christmas lights will be hanging on for dear life to the trees that have not been cut by owners of the new houses that have sprouted around here this year.

Those five months are going through that same familiar cycle again of Christmas decors, and coming soon to this theater are the Christmas parties, shopping for gifts, exchanging of gifts, traffic, Noche Buena, Media Noche, and the recycled-pa-more fruitcake.

There’s so much pressure to party and to be happy for the holiday season, no wonder emotional eaters gain back all the weight they managed to lose from January to August.

But drinking has to be in moderation now that judges of a state court in Frankfurt, Germany have defined an illness as “any, even a slight or temporary, disruption of the body’s normal condition or normal activity.” An Associated Press piece said that this was part of “a verdict relating to a food supplement marketed as an ‘antihangover drink,’” wherein “the marketing of the supplement violated a ban on attributing to food products the ability to prevent, treat or heal illnesses.”

The judges’ definition of an illness “includes headaches and other symptoms that result from consuming alcohol, a ‘harmful substance.’”

So, a hangover is a disease. If the boss will ask why you were absent the morning after the office’s Christmas party, you can now say you were sick, when in fact it was due to a hangover.

I gotta feeling many Frankfurt residents will now have a valid excuse for absences during the Oktoberfest next month. Hic. Let’s drink to that! Cheers!

People who have been there, done that with hangovers can probably relate with “The Hangover” trilogy. But a hangover was the least of Chanel Miller’s worries upon learning that Brock Turner raped her while she was dead drunk.

In 2015 and 2016 when her case’s court hearings were ongoing, her true identity was hidden under the name, Emily Doe. It was only this month that she and her real name were finally revealed. And she’s now the author of “Know My Name: A Memoir.”

The victim impact statement, which she addressed to Turner at the sentencing, began with, “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.”

The statement also included this: “Future reference, if you are confused about whether a girl can consent, see if she can speak an entire sentence.”

Everything should always be in moderation—drinking, eating, shopping, partying, and, hmmm, Merry Christmasing?

For cigarettes and drugs, however, moderation is not enough—both should be avoided like the way I avoid spiders. Brrr.

Pick your poison is defined by Urban Dictionary as, “What you say when someone’s supposed to choose between two horrible options”; “What a bartender says to someone when he/she needs to make a choice.”

The lesser of two evils is defined by Urban Dictionary as, “when one is presented with two bad choices. The person chooses the one that has less of a consequence.”

My choices now are like, To read or to write? That’s the question. Haha! Life becomes simple once focus shifts only to things that truly matter. Less distractions, less time wasters, less toxicity.

And Greta Thunberg, who’s only 16 years old, has already learned the value of focus as she leads the fight against climate change. But some of the young once are seemingly trying to divert that focus, such as psychologist Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg who was quoted as saying (source: Daily Mail), “I worry about her going the same as child TV stars, that they just burn out and potentially have a disastrous psychological outcome.” Well, Justin Bieber comes to mind.

But Thunberg is not a showbiz celebrity, so, how is that again? People older than her are in denial when it comes to climate change. It’s time for the young ones to educate the young once about it.