Eight Days To Go

Nah, I am not counting the days till  Christmas, I am counting the days till September 1. And that’s eight days till September 1. Curious? I bet.

Our famous singer/composer. Jose Mari Chan would say, “I’m coming, I’m coming”. He is the first voice you’ll hear come September 1 because  music airlanes  somehow conspire to play his songs by then.  Jose Mari Chan is one of the famous faces of Christmas. Among his popular songs which they usually play on radios are Christmas in our Hearts and A Perfect Christmas.

Yes, the start of the BER month is coming. It’s the beginning of Christmas celebration here in the Philippines. Let’s forget Covid for a while.

Remembering those days in grade school.  At the start of December (we had Christmas break then), we would decorate some small tree trunks without the leaves and are usually painted white by our teacher. Back then, Christmas trees as we know now were practically unheard of in our school in  the barangay. Garlands would be crepe papers of red and green (those are the Christmas colors we knew then), stars that  we hung on the tree are from the silky inner wrappings of cigarettes cut into small stars with  ball thread. Art papers in different colors are also used for decors. You can make them into poinsettia flowers, ribbons, wreaths and what have you. Small boxes are wrapped to place on the tree branches while some bigger but empty ones are placed under the tree.

culled from the net just to show you how it was done.

Of course we had exchange gifts too at the last day before Christmas break. We had singing and dancing and sometimes declamation contests too. Usual gifts we received during those times were a pair of  face towel and bath soap, pencils, candies, toothbrush paired with a little box of toothpaste, and small things that a child of 7 to 10 would appreciate. Our teacher would bring a “bilao of bibingka” which we usually share after the program.

Those were the days. A simple way of celebrating Christmas but they were fun days too.

 

 

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