THIS SEASON of joy, an occasion for tears.
If only for one carol – I’ll be home for Christmas. Whoever sings it – Bing Crosby or Michael Buble, Whitney Houston or Josh Groban – reduces me to a crying heap.
Just the first strains are more than enough to work up the lacrimal glands –
I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love
Even more than I usually do
And although I know it’s a long road back
I promise you…
Thoughts of toiling fathers in the scorching desert sand, of seafaring husbands amid the frozen winter seas, of care-giving mothers in some retirement home, of child-rearing sisters in some high-rise flats – all of them wishing, longing, pining —
I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Aye, presents under the tree, but not so much – indeed, not ever – for snow and mistletoe. As for the parol, simbang gabi, and bibingka, puto bumbong, suman, and tamales.
And, above all, family —
Christmas eve will find you
Where the love light gleams
At the Misa de Aguinaldo singing Gloria in Excelsis joyfully welcoming with the angels and the shepherds the birth of the Savior.
And then, from the humblest hovels to the grandest mansions, the whole family, in prayerful thanksgiving, partaking of the noche buena feast.
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.
The overseas Filipino worker sings. And I just can’t help but wail with him.
Still, he, she can dream of some homecoming.
Alas, that is not so with the folk uprooted, displaced, death-visited, wherever injustice and terror still supremely reign.
For them, home for Christmas is now all in the heart, pained memories of what once was. Of what can never be again.
Of them, what can we sing?
Only dirges to haunt the barely surviving.
Suffering deepening. The weeping unceasing.
Still, hope eternally springs.
There in the Book a cause for some soul-uplifting: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”
No home at His aborning. Home for all mankind is in Him.
Rejoice.
(First published in December 2012)
