Friday, December 24, 2010

Perfect Christmas (23 December 2004)

Since it's Christmas Eve, it is fitting to resurrect one of the best pieces I've ever written. I wrote "Perfect Christmas" shortly after the 2004 Bacolod Unigames. I was terribly sick with chicken pox and was stuck in the guest room in isolation for a week. Back then, I had the biggest crush on Jose Mari Chan's daughter. Through the song "Perfect Christmas" (and my infatuation!), I dug deep to write.

A few days before Christmas 2004, much to my surprise, I received several congratulatory messages from people who have read my stuff from the Philippine Daily Inquirer's Youngblood section. It was a great feeling to get published!

Please bear with the excessive sappiness of my 2004 self!

Christmas, regardless of all the merry making, gift giving and expressions of familial love, never fails to remind me of my emotional loneliness. As far as I can remember, I have always yearned for a different kind of love with a romantic twist.

Each time the traditional Christmas gathering in my maternal ancestral home ends, I stare by the tinted window of the car and try to think about the girl whom I was bound to meet one way or another. In the loneliness of that moment, I attempt to console myself by thinking about that perfect Christmas.

What is the perfect Christmas? Jose Mari Chan eloquently captured this far-fetched dream of mine in one of his greatest works of all time. Indeed, an ideal celebration of Christmas does wholly depend on the grandiosity of a venue, or the sheer extravagance of the exchanging of gifts that, sadly, punctuates Christmas. The perfect Christmas, from a romantic’s point-of-view, is an expression of our genuine, selfless love.

The treasures of Christmas are striking in its simplicity. If one is fortunate enough to encounter Christmases that are so vividly depicted in Jose Mari Chan’s immortal hit, he or she need not search through the dark recesses of the Earth’s center since the perfect Christmas is simply about enjoying a wonderful moment with your better half.

Christmas is barely two months away. I have absolutely no reason to think that December 25, 2004 would be different from Christmases of the past years. One can only pause and live through the sanctity of the moment, hoping that the perfect Christmas is yet to come.

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