Oh no, I have just remembered the December dawn.
You see, each morning from December 15th to 24th, I will be woken by the sound of car horns at 5.45 a.m. Friends of our neighbours in the village come to collect them to attend 'miso de gallo', or ‘simbang gabi’, the Mass at cockcrow. If Romeo lived in the Philippines he would have declaimed “Soft, what light from yonder window breaks. It is the east and Juliet is the sun” near to that ghastly time. I cringe under the bed sheets to counter the sound of 100,00 birds in our village wakening as one and squawking the avian equivalent of Romeo’s tender lines, and that’s before their first worm of the day! At 6.15 a.m the faithful need to be kneeling at prayer. I am just relieved that we do not live near one of the many beautiful 16 or 17th century Spanish churches built here, tolling the deep, sonorous timbre of their bells, forged in Toledo perhaps.
Juliet (played by my wife, Gina) grumpily gets up and showers and dresses in silence, a warning to me to say nothing, collects her niece from the adjoining bedroom and heads off to pray. We live close enough to the church for them to walk there and back in safety. Vendors with wheeled carts hover at the church for the service to end. They sell warm ‘bibingka’ and ‘puto’, the traditional rice cakes, and hot coffee and “tsokolate”, aimed at strengthening the bodies and minds of the early churchgoers, the mass hopefully having fortified their souls. I look forward to Gina coming home with some warm rice cakes for my breakfast and strong black ‘kapeng barako’. Yes, the Philippines is a coffee producer, in the province of Batangas and elsewhere. So far Nescafé is the biggest buyer but watch out for it soon in your favourite Starbucks! The barako bean makes a strong dark and full flavoured coffee, ideal in the morning either straight or au lait or latte
Christmas began in our house as soon as Halloween was over. Gina and the domestic staff climbed into the attic, burrowing for decorations. By the first week in November garlands and baubles were sparkling inside and outside the house, day by day. Two weeks later, their work finished, lights were twinkling all over the house. Our seven year old daughter, Hannah, was overjoyed, ‘Wow, daddy’. My annual protestations about waiting until December had been brushed aside-again! I must give my wife credit though. She decorates the house delightfully. I reflect that poorer people in the rural areas, using local materials, make many of the decorations, with usually enchanting results and so it is one way for us to help them
For me there are two signs that Christmas is coming. The first, in August, is carols and Disney snowy music on the PA system at the malls, at the airport, in hotel lobbies, even in hospitals. The second, and more dramatic, is the appearance, in September, of rows and rows of multi coloured lights under the expressway entry and exit ramps. These are not a revolutionary traffic control system but the beautiful night time lights of hundreds of ‘parols’ for sale. The 'parol' is a traditional Christmas lantern made of ‘capiz’, formed from carefully selected transparent seashells, supported by wire and filled with light bulbs. They are usually round or star shaped and are intended to be hung high on the front of the house. After living here for a few years it becomes clear that the squatters never actually left, they merely went to the province to collect parols to sell from home, so to speak.
Christmas actually takes place on Christmas Eve. After nearly 400 years of Spanish rule, the main event is the feast of La Noche Buena, the ‘good night’ when Christ was born, celebrated by most of the family coming together for dinner at midnight and exchanging gifts. The main dish is often a piece of baked ham, as large as the family can afford. It is traditional that the table be groaning under the weight of dishes of food on it, even if not all eaten that night. Steaming bowls of various local foods such as, ‘menudo’, ‘embutido’ and ‘caldereta’ (note the Spanish ancestry) will be served along with sweet cakes often made with tropical coconut and sugar cane. For the affluent there may be ‘lechon’, a whole pig roasted over charcoal on a spit. Piles of beautiful tropical fruit will also be on the table. One essential, and too me, mystifying dish, is ‘queso de bola’ or a cheese shaped as a ball. It literally is a complete imported red-waxed Dutch Edam cheese. Now how did that become part of the Filipino-Spanish Christmas tradition?
I have tried to have a traditional English Christmas lunch and present giving the next day. All the ingredients are available if you look around thoroughly, but my Filipino family’s attitude to it defeated me finally. I least I can cook a turkey or goose for dinner, which they like, and then be left to eat the Christmas pudding myself for nearly a week. I usually get homesick for my English family, holly and a roaring log fire at some point on Christmas day, but I suppress it with another bibingka and some queso de bola. Ay naku!
Maligayang pasko (Happy Christmas)
You see, each morning from December 15th to 24th, I will be woken by the sound of car horns at 5.45 a.m. Friends of our neighbours in the village come to collect them to attend 'miso de gallo', or ‘simbang gabi’, the Mass at cockcrow. If Romeo lived in the Philippines he would have declaimed “Soft, what light from yonder window breaks. It is the east and Juliet is the sun” near to that ghastly time. I cringe under the bed sheets to counter the sound of 100,00 birds in our village wakening as one and squawking the avian equivalent of Romeo’s tender lines, and that’s before their first worm of the day! At 6.15 a.m the faithful need to be kneeling at prayer. I am just relieved that we do not live near one of the many beautiful 16 or 17th century Spanish churches built here, tolling the deep, sonorous timbre of their bells, forged in Toledo perhaps.
Juliet (played by my wife, Gina) grumpily gets up and showers and dresses in silence, a warning to me to say nothing, collects her niece from the adjoining bedroom and heads off to pray. We live close enough to the church for them to walk there and back in safety. Vendors with wheeled carts hover at the church for the service to end. They sell warm ‘bibingka’ and ‘puto’, the traditional rice cakes, and hot coffee and “tsokolate”, aimed at strengthening the bodies and minds of the early churchgoers, the mass hopefully having fortified their souls. I look forward to Gina coming home with some warm rice cakes for my breakfast and strong black ‘kapeng barako’. Yes, the Philippines is a coffee producer, in the province of Batangas and elsewhere. So far Nescafé is the biggest buyer but watch out for it soon in your favourite Starbucks! The barako bean makes a strong dark and full flavoured coffee, ideal in the morning either straight or au lait or latte
Christmas began in our house as soon as Halloween was over. Gina and the domestic staff climbed into the attic, burrowing for decorations. By the first week in November garlands and baubles were sparkling inside and outside the house, day by day. Two weeks later, their work finished, lights were twinkling all over the house. Our seven year old daughter, Hannah, was overjoyed, ‘Wow, daddy’. My annual protestations about waiting until December had been brushed aside-again! I must give my wife credit though. She decorates the house delightfully. I reflect that poorer people in the rural areas, using local materials, make many of the decorations, with usually enchanting results and so it is one way for us to help them
For me there are two signs that Christmas is coming. The first, in August, is carols and Disney snowy music on the PA system at the malls, at the airport, in hotel lobbies, even in hospitals. The second, and more dramatic, is the appearance, in September, of rows and rows of multi coloured lights under the expressway entry and exit ramps. These are not a revolutionary traffic control system but the beautiful night time lights of hundreds of ‘parols’ for sale. The 'parol' is a traditional Christmas lantern made of ‘capiz’, formed from carefully selected transparent seashells, supported by wire and filled with light bulbs. They are usually round or star shaped and are intended to be hung high on the front of the house. After living here for a few years it becomes clear that the squatters never actually left, they merely went to the province to collect parols to sell from home, so to speak.
Christmas actually takes place on Christmas Eve. After nearly 400 years of Spanish rule, the main event is the feast of La Noche Buena, the ‘good night’ when Christ was born, celebrated by most of the family coming together for dinner at midnight and exchanging gifts. The main dish is often a piece of baked ham, as large as the family can afford. It is traditional that the table be groaning under the weight of dishes of food on it, even if not all eaten that night. Steaming bowls of various local foods such as, ‘menudo’, ‘embutido’ and ‘caldereta’ (note the Spanish ancestry) will be served along with sweet cakes often made with tropical coconut and sugar cane. For the affluent there may be ‘lechon’, a whole pig roasted over charcoal on a spit. Piles of beautiful tropical fruit will also be on the table. One essential, and too me, mystifying dish, is ‘queso de bola’ or a cheese shaped as a ball. It literally is a complete imported red-waxed Dutch Edam cheese. Now how did that become part of the Filipino-Spanish Christmas tradition?
I have tried to have a traditional English Christmas lunch and present giving the next day. All the ingredients are available if you look around thoroughly, but my Filipino family’s attitude to it defeated me finally. I least I can cook a turkey or goose for dinner, which they like, and then be left to eat the Christmas pudding myself for nearly a week. I usually get homesick for my English family, holly and a roaring log fire at some point on Christmas day, but I suppress it with another bibingka and some queso de bola. Ay naku!
Maligayang pasko (Happy Christmas)
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