Christmas blues… or reds

Rhona Canoy

SO… I don’t know if it’s my advancing age that’s turning me jaded or what, but these Christmas holidays are making me cringe. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all the non-working days, and the food—don’t even get me started on the food. But in the overall scheme of things, when I compare today’s holidays to the Christmas days of my childhood, let me just say that too many things have lost their meaning.

Let’s talk about year-end bonuses, for one. Yes, we all look forward to it, knowing that the government has already mandated 13th month pay, even 14th and 15th month pay in some cases. And some people are lucky enough to get an actual bonus—handed out because it has been a good business year. Unearned, not mandated nor required by law. And visions of peso signs dance around in our heads.

I’m just going to say it without fear or bad intention. Just the bare-faced nekkid truth. We Pinoys need serious lessons in financial management. Yes, we do. And probably a revisit of our values and what we consider important. I cannot fathom how people can casually blow their bonuses with no regard for what they must face after new year. Holiday spending is manic. Things we have pined for all year, that we can actually live without. iPhones, iPads, BluMarine wristwatches, Tori Burch (Burkh?) handbags, all unnecessary things that cost tens of thousands of pesos.

The cost of putting up a Christmas tree almost made me faint. Especially with the pressure to decorate it in such a way as to deserve a cover shoot for Architectural Digest. Malls and department stores will display these wares hoping to strum the Norman Rockwell strings of your heart. And we spend thousands for a piece of dust-catching decoration which will stand in the spotlight for a month or two. And the planning that goes into the food to be consumed over the holidays! Although in all honesty, that’s one thing I won’t complain about.

But the reality remains. We overspend. Excessively. Unthinkingly. With blatant disregard for our financial woes that await soon after the bingeing days are over. We don’t plan for tomorrow after our bonuses find their way into our wallets. For many, the reassurance lies in the thought that there is always money we can borrow or a salary we can advance (for the lucky ones) when we run out of financial air. All this spending for a fleeting holiday which has lost its religious meaning. I did spend some time playing what if. It’s one of my most favorite games in the world. Here’s my what if. What if I lived in the mountains as a farmer, without benefit of calendar, timepiece or religion? What if my time cycle was driven by the harvest and the planting, by the dry and wet seasons? What if it mattered not what year it was, nor what month, day, or time it was? Would I be running at this frenetic pace, living only in the now during holiday season?

Year-end overspending should not surprise us. For, after all, don’t we overspend as a rule? We need lessons on budgeting, sensible spending, financial accountability and responsibility. We need to distinguish the vast difference between want and need. We need to know how to do without because it’s necessary. We need to learn how to prioritize. We need to know that it’s possible to live debt-free, as long as we keep our vanities in check. Wow. That’s a lot of need. Sadly, not the kind of need we should be aware of.

For whatever reasons, we Pinoys live for today, live in the now. This can’t be argued. We don’t believe in saving for… well, for whatever. When my daughter was starting in college, she began earning for her other “needs”, selling Tupperware, Red Logo, her homemade cookies. I was quite surprised to see just how much money she thought she needed. Mani-pedis, hair rebonding, fashion tzatzkis, cellphone load, movies, girls night. And that’s only what I knew. I was always on her case to save 100 pesos a week, which fell on deaf ears until I made it mandatory one Christmas. She was ecstatic over how much cash she received as gifts (a practice which I absolutely abhor) and spent it all in one weekend. So we started saving the following January. The tradeoff was that she could use her savings any way she wanted come Christmas time, on the condition that it was not to be touched until then.

Much to her surprise, she managed to be diligient and put away a little bit over 5,000 pesos by the time the next Christmas rolled around, a nice chunk of change ten years ago. That would have been enough to make me proud but what made me prouder still was her decision not to touch her savings, while continuing to add to it. I figure if people put away 50 pesos a week, they would have enough in a month to pay for half of their water bill. And if they also included thrifty habits like turning off the faucet while brushing their teeth, then that would be a profitable endeavor.

Yes, I know you’re going to say that it’s easy for me to be judgmental because I live a life of comfort and plenty (abi ’nyo lang). But I will tell you to shut your mouth because you don’t have any idea how I live and how my crazy brain works. One of my favorite what-ifs was “what if I earned and lived on what an average maid or yaya makes”. Those two months was not fun for my daughter. But it taught us to respect what domestics do, and to be sure that we would pay them enough if we ever got a maid. The getting a maid part never happened, but the lesson to respect honest labor and wise spending was well taught.

Sometimes I wonder if the holiday season should be year round, seeing as how much we prefer to live in the red.