There is that song we love to call "Ang Pasko ay Sumapit" but whose title really appears as "Maligayang Pasko at Masaganang Bagong Taon" on musical sheet. The piece is made popular with the lyrics provided by the late Levi Celerio, National Artist for Music. The song is originally in Cebuano, composed by Vicente D. Rubi and Mariano Vestil in 1933.
It is a song that speaks so much about how we can expand Christmas to our eccentric liking. It speaks also about how odd we are with certain music cut for certain seasons. The song with the lyrics of Celerion was used with a martial tempo for a movie called "Ang Pugad ng Agila."
Listen to the song again and some of its lines. They betray so much what we can be and what we cannot be. One line sings: Tayo's mangagsiawit/ Habang ang mundo's tahimik."
Can't we just leave the night in silence and not consider its quietude the precondition for riot?
But seriously now, this longest Christmas is really a trading trick for people to have the longest most expensive, duplicitous season's sale and for radios and TVs to play on and on Christmas songs till they lose the essence of the season. The truth is Christmas comes once a year, on a particular day or at least weeks but not month and that we should, if we are the only Christian country in the Far East (pre-postcolonial discourse), really love each other even if it is not Christmas and we should not wait for a Christmas carol to remind us that. Can I say now "Merry Chr....?