Greeting Christmas

Hope lies in the celebration of a Redeemer’s birth while irony lurks in the commercialism that attends the celebration. When nostalgia grips in this season of hope and irony, one can only think of home.

It seems strange to know that Christmas is nigh and where I am doesn’t have much of what makes Christmas. So I think of home and all those tinsels and carols and commerce in malls that enliven the Christmas spirit. I can almost taste the nip of cold dawns on my way to dawn masses, long ago.

It is stranger still to expect Christmas trappings in an Islamic country. Luckily, Dubai as a cosmopolitan world city does have trimmings in some shops and establishments, though not as profuse or even garish as we have them in our country.  In fact, the expectedly China-made Christmas trimmings that we use there are available the whole year round in some small shops here, as decors other than Christmas, one may believe.

But leave it to Filipinos never to forget. A group of Filipino entrepreneurs tied up with locals to hold a “Pasko sa Disyerto.” In some other season, it would have been a desert safari as desert tours are called. They include “dune bashing,” a ride in a powerful land cruiser over desert sands and mounds and even mountains, an equivalent of a roller coaster ride.

It’s worth attending, the husband had said, though it was vital that I forego the “dune bashing.” But I had a brief feel of how it is on the way to and from the desert camp. The vehicle was sometimes on its side at more than 90 degrees, and then it suddenly caromed down a steep incline.  It was to the special-licensed desert driver’s credit that the whole episode didn’t stun one’s eardrums. But I blamed it for the days of excruciating backaches soon after. Blame also went to the desert camp seats that were floor pillows, in keeping with Bedouin tradition, and the dancing that I did late into the night.

The camp was made to look like a medieval desert fortress with walls and lookout towers at its four corners. Inside were tents, shelters mostly though some were shops, and a big canopy in the middle, which was the main entertainment area where a Filipino band played. Also offered in the camp were tour-inclusive henna tattooing, camel rides, flowing drinks, and food that could feed thousands.

Hundreds came in a fleet of land cruisers and some 20 buses. While the majority were Filipinos, the crowd was a mix of many races. We got to talk to a gentle Emirati who turned out to be an army general. He danced like the husband, which is to say that they look nice trying to decide whether they’re apple pickers or firewalkers.

There was a real belly dancer who later picked out some Filipino males to dance along. That was reason enough for real bellyaches. Such sport, those kababayans. They knew how to wiggle their bulging bellies to a laughing crowd.

The whole atmosphere was foreign to the hilt, except for the Christmas tinsels that were everywhere.  They were reminders of home as the desert bushes were reminders that a long time ago, one of their kind burned for Moses.

It was cold in the desert when the evening temperature dropped to single digits, colder when the wind blew.  It was, indeed, on a cold winter night when He Whom we celebrate Christmas for was born.

Then it rained. In the desert, rain is seldom, if not rare.

‘In our job diaspora, we Filipinos are like rain in the desert,’ the husband said in his opening speech during the program. ‘We give something of ourselves to our host country, because our own country is the website of the rain.’

(17 Dec 2006)