Category: Christmas

Christmas 1970

11/22/2013

By the close of 1970, neither Pope Paul VI's visit nor the sugary glow of a thousand Christmas parols can lighten spirits. We are worn down from wildcat strikes and student unrest, brownouts, typhoons, floods, fires and looting. After the battering typhoons, sickness sweeps through the city.

An undercurrent of anxiety wends through the house. Dad’s looking for a job in the States, Scott is edgy at UP, I am now traveling to International School in Makati, Margaret is being bullied by her two American girl friends at JASMS, and mother has a secret she isn't sharing. Only Johanna seems immune to the pall that has fallen over us. We are thus determined to make an event out of Christmas. During the “forced vacation” (Scott’s term) of so many typhoons, floods and student demonstrations, Scott carves a block print in Brother Love style: Peace-Hope-Joy. Mom assembles us, her Christmas elves, to address and stamp the 200 letters. Margaret, already the most organized, helps mom bake a fruitcake before a late-season typhoon arrives. Scott wins the jostle for trimming rights, so our shiny aluminum tree is adorned with red crepe flowers. Somehow we know this is our last Christmas as this Poethig constellation under the Southern Cross.

Mom describes our gift buying to in a letter to grandmother:

Margaret is the first to buy and wrap her presents. She gets them all out of her P2.45 a week allowance and never asks for a subsidy. This year her presents included a piece of lead found after the typhoon which she gave to Scott to melt into peace symbols, a box of carefully burned matches which were usable as charcoal for Johanna to draw with. She made chokers for Kerry out of velvet ribbon with buttons or lace. I got a block ring she made at school and a baby bottle.

Johanna saves her money, plans presents carefully and in advance, and often gives expensive gifts.This year she ordered the popular very wide belts to be laced up the front and worn with peasant-style dresses from a shoemaker in Marikina. They didn’t arrive on time, because the man’s wife had a baby, but when she did get them they were a big hit. She’s now going to take orders and set up a business.

Scott takes presents very seriously and loves to shop for them. He can never keep a secret, which is just as well this year as four times he bought presents duplicated by others. He and Kerry bought Dick identical umbrellas, he and Johanna both gave me a telephone book (Hagen [the dog] ate up the last one), he and Martha Clark both gave Johanna an art pen and he bought Kerry a book of poems she had already gotten from someone else (that didn’t end the coincidences. Kerry bought Johanna large gold loop earrings. Later Johanna shopped at the same Cubao store and saw the earrings and bought herself a pair!)

Kerry never has any money, can’t think of what to buy, and usually ends up giving Dick a collection of her poems. In self-defense she usually goes together with someone in giving presents. This year Scott gave way to her and let her give the umbrella to Dick, I volunteered to receive the poems, Johanna picked out sunglasses for Scott, and she contributed to the family present to Margaret.

Margaret's dollhouse is mom’s project, so we are all enlisted. We know she imagines a Manila version of her Victorian dollhouse in Dayton, Ohio. The magnificent two story house her father made had wallpapered rooms and exquisite tiny furnishings. Manila’s carpenters are rebuilding real houses after the typhoon, so mom orders picture frames and Scott hinges them together in pairs and secures cardboard for freestanding walls. I glue Christmas wrap wallpaper. Johanna stitches a velvet and felt wardrobe. How to replace the crippled, aging dolls? Our dog Hagen chewed off their arms and Skipper's head has fallen off the neck knob. No matter, Margaret says. She likes to comb Skipper's hair. Barbies have not yet made it to Manila. Mom phones Marie, grandmother's former Peace Corps roommate. Marie's back in the Philippines since her new husband is working on "population control". This time she has PX privileges. Our wiry, blond American angel arrives with Skipper and Christie.

We labor on the dollhouse through Christmas Eve day. Mom fights with the Singer sewing machine to finish Scott's costume of Hell for “The House by the Stable.” She calls it "Faustian." I have to look that up. SS Wright Auntie Joy is the director. Her husband, Cesar Virata, is now Finance Secretary of the Philippines, so we have a real star on our SS Wright tree.

After the long Quezon City-Malate round trip, we plunk down in the sala. I slump on the couch.
“Haaay, let's open presents tomorrow” I sigh. Johanna will have none of it.
“We have to open presents tonight. It’s tradition!”
So, slowly, then with more delight, we deliver our gifts to the aluminum tree, feel a bit better for the look, a little paltry with a sense of plenty. Margaret’s dollhouse sits on a table under a miniature tree, with Christie and Skipper nattily dressed.

We set candles around the sala and celebrate peace-hope-joy.

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Christmas 1967 – the last in Malate

7/24/2013

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Christmas 1967, our the last in Malate, Mom’s letter to grandmother…

Christmas Eve Scott and Johanna were in a play, “Nino the Tongueless one”. Scott was a king and in charge of the lights and Johanna an ox. All week I sewed costumes – up to the end. It was written, directed, and narrated by Dick Solis and it was lovely! It was followed by the chorus of Ellinwood and Union Church singing Benjamin Britton’s "Ceremony of Carols”.

We came home, hung stockings on our real tree (rapidly browning) and went to bed to sleep a little before midnight when we planned to get up again. We were tired, not having had much sleep that week. They (“the construction”) were pouring cement all night several nights and on Saturday night, the watchmen who sleep outside our kitchen window (second floor of their construction) left their radio blaring all night.

At midnight Johanna woke us up, the church bells rang gaily and the watchmen suddenly turned their radio on again – rock and roll. I thought, “I can’t stand that music all during my Christmas Eve! I’ll have a nervous breakdown!” But they turned it off soon. I then felt sorry for them there all alone. So Johanna and I fixed up cocoa and stollen for them (a “Noche Buena” snack). One man walked across the scaffolding to our back wall. We handed him the basket from the back steps and back he crept. The man ate on the worktable where they do carpentry work by day and sleep by night.

We had fun opening presents. Johanna got a doll and materials for sewing from Mrs. Carpenter, her SS teacher at Westminster church. Dick gave me a brass pitcher from Korea and gorgeous silk for a robe. Kerry got a guitar. Johanna gave all her Barbie dolls and furniture to Margaret. Scott got a record and Johanna other small items. We finally went to bed at 4am after eating.

At 6:30am the children were up again! We went to church at 10, then to the Niguidulas for lunch. It was quiet, cool and relaxing in Antipolo. Then we stopped in at the Abraham’s and ended up at the Grosvenor Blair’s (A lawyer at Esso, wife directed “Nino”) for supper. It was such a Christmassy meal – smoked turkey, stuffing, apples, Sunkist oranges, scrambled eggs and cranberry sauce. Mince pie for those who could.

And after dinner the Ellinwood choir came and caroled! About 35 of them sang, came in and ate sandwiches, chocolate cake, and punch and sang again. They ended with the Hallelujah chorus. And I tell you that it is some way to end Christmas, with the Hallelujah Chorus being sung in your livingroom!

It so inspired Dick and Grove, they started talking about initiating litigation to secure legal rights for the urban poor – and they were ready to go on for another all nighter.

But we did manage to go home, pack suitcases for Baguio, sleep, leave before noon on Tuesday: Dick, Scott, Margaret, and me by car. Kerry, Johanna and Annie by bus with Alex and Fern Grant. By Tuesday night all 9 of us were tucked away in House B.The next day the Acculturation Conference began. Dick was on the Planning Committee and gave one of the best papers in the 3-day conference. We were proud of him. He held his own among the social scientists and anthropologists, 325 were registered, including 50 sisters from St. Louis School. Very friendly group.

On Friday noon, Jan Kinnier and four children arrived, so we were fifteen! But it worked out well. Jan bought at the PX and took the children horseback riding. We had expected Alex and Fern to leave, but they were having so much fun they stayed the whole weekend.

Sunday night we had a bang-up new year’s party. Irene Davidson joined us (She’s here for a month or two). The children stayed up until midnight. I was really impressed with the teenageness of K and S. There was a real gang of teenagers who had fun together – Kerry, Wendy Kinnier, Marcia Jordan, Beverly White, Scott, Steve, Chris Jordan, and Bob White. Monday we had the Jordans over for a luscious ham dinner. Tuesday we all left by car and bus, leaving the Kinnier family to stay on.

Going up to Baguio, we left a muffler, so it was with fear and trembling we started down – but made it all the way to Manila without mishap.

This almost turned out to be the first Christmas we didn’t have “tourist” guests to entertain. However, Saturday before Christmas, a family bound for Australia to study his work arrived. And he wanted to know about urban situations! So all day Sat went to them, though we also had a nice Christmas party at the church for the children.

I almost forgot, on Sunday (Christmas Eve) we took all SS children caroling at Philippine General Hospital Pediatric Ward. We also distributed gifts. At noon I suddenly felt I had to do some Christmas baking, so I made five stollen, two mince pies, two salads, a plate of eggs and meat. The Palms came over to visit and went to “Nino” and that's where the account began!

Horned Bill, Reprise

After my 7th grade baccalaureate, after Kagalakan, we learn we aren’t returning to our Malate home at 1667 B Vasquez. I know what I need to do. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, I slip down on the dark wood floor and pull out a dusty old box from under the bed. It bears a beard of dust webbing, and spiders have fashioned their own homes among the box's contents: leaves, a bullet shell, the gold rock, other moments. I finger the Horned Bill's relics most carefully. The leaves once encrusted with blood crumble at my touch, but the gold rock’s vein still vibrates.

The Horned Bill memory is distant and sad but still vengeful. She won't let me forget, appears unexpectedly in my dreams with bloodied feathers, beak half gasped—and a streak of fear that no one stayed her execution. I empty the box's contents tenderly under the gnarled roots of our acacia tree.

Mom and the Contest at Mt Carmel

Mom got very involved with the Prophets in the months before our furlough in the States.

I'm still attached to the Early Church Father marionettes. She manages us as her personal elves when a project idea erupts - so many theater productions, events, parties, household traditions. But the result is always magic. So, I see her dark hair bent over wet paper mache as she molds the aquiline noses and strong Byzantine features of those old men. While she sews their costumes and Scott strings their arms onto the cross-sticks, Jo, Marg and I work on a stage and scroll for scene changes. Then we work marionettes, endlessly reenacting gory tales of Christian martyrs consumed by wild beasts in the Roman coliseum. Paul falls of his horse on his way to Damascus. Jerome has a long adventure regarding his Latin bible. John Chrysostom offers a recap of one of his sermons. Augustine explains (I would say apologizes for) the theology of original sin. We tell some stories of our own after hours.

Then their 15 days of fame are over and the Early Church Fathers hang around the bodega looking morose, their cloaks molding in the humidity, their strings tangled. Jerome’s handsome head lasts the longest and is finally detached from his corrupted body. It reminds me of John the Baptist.

But Christian Education does not linger. Now, Elijah is on the run after the Contest on Mt Carmel. Earlier, we finished a play about Ahab, Jezebel and the priests. In Margaret’s kindergarten class, they are whipping up fingerpaint renditions of Elijah’s encounter with God. Mom is especially proud of her music. She reports to grandmother, “I used Bloch’s “Schlemo” to tell the story since it gets loud and soft in the right places.” So the kindergarteners are guided through three fingerpainting sessions, a treatment in yellow when Elijah flees to the desert, then a move to multicolor when the earthquake, wind and fire shake up Mt Horeb (though God isn't in these). And finally, during the last movement of Schlemo they whip up God's still small voice is bright blue.

Scott seems to have a contest at Mt Carmel every day. When he tries to ask a question at UP Prep High School, where he is a sophomore, his classmates shout him down. They say it's because they're anti-American. Mom thinks Scott is too eager to do all the talking and he argues with his teachers. “Try a different approach,” she tells him in her still small voice. (I don't know this at the time. I read her letters about our 'wars at home' much later.) She tells grandmother,

He has an eye virus, which caused blinking, which still continued. I noticed it stopped last Sunday (Oct 68) after he was in the drama, “Contest on Mt Carmel” I think it took his mind off his other tensions. But when he accompanied me to the PTA meeting last Sunday and none of his friends were there, I saw him standing alone, blinking furiously. It reminded me of once when he was just three years old and we were training at Mt Freedom. I looked out our window and saw Scott standing on the edge of the Kindergarten group, with the same expression on his face. He wants to fiercely to be part of his group. But his very aggressiveness is what makes it hard for others to take him in.

Still, she's perplexed by our American “turn.”

...the older the children become, the less they are affected by Filipino ways. Or is it that as their friends becomes more Filipino in their ways the less our children seem Filipino. Scott is a real maverick. He reports upperclassmen that are seen smoking, while others won't do it since they are afraid of being beat up by the boys after they graduate. He complains loudly that he does most of the work in his committees. He is fiercely competitive. The 8 years of cooperative JASMS seem to have given him an unquenched thirst to be first. And he is fighting tooth and nail with Alexander Syson for first place in First Year.

Kerry also complains that others on her committees leave the work up to her. She has a thick accent when she speaks to her friends, but she is so aggressive and bossy! More than she is at home. The politeness toward adults doesn’t seem to carry over to the home either! And they are not quiet-spoken, or graceful, or shy. I took them to the doctor’s last Saturday morning. It was a small office and my four were like the half-grown cubs in Born Free!

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Sundays

5/13/2013

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During vacation, from the thick heat of April to May, your Sunday clothes stick to your body with sweat. Your handkerchief, which you fold to mop your brow, is streaked with dirt. In the Elliinwood sanctuary, the small electric fans fastened to the pillars whir ineffectually over our heads. Pews are a-flutter with Sunday bulletins, handkerchiefs and sandlewood fans, all gently flapping. It looks like many species of butterflies mating. Maya birds dive in and out of the high eves chirping through the 10 am service.

Johanna’s a scamp. When she's little, she’s already suspicious of the Sacraments. We're kicking our feet aimlessly into the air, skewered one-two-three between mom and dad on the hard wooden pews. Dad hands mom the Communion bread over us. Johanna's hand shoots out for a little white square of Wonder Bread. Mom catches her wrist. Jo pulls at squirms, “I’m hangry!’
Mom whispers, “Not this bread Johanna, you can have a popsicle after church.”
Then the big silver tray with little glasses of grape juice is passed over us and continues down the pew.
Mom and dad each take one, swig them, and set them in little holes in back of the front pew.
I like those little holes.
Mom leans over with her head in her hands.
This alarms Johanna. "Whattsa matter?”
When mom still doesn’t answer, Johanna tries again, “Whattsa matter mommy, koolaid feel you bad?” A fit of giggles ripples down the pew.
When she’s older, Johanna doesn’t even sit with us. She slips up to the balcony to draw.

But Sunday tops the charts. First, there’s Sunday School, which we love, no lie. If we have to go to church too, then after the choir sings “Amen, Amen, AAaaaaa-men,” we tumble out with a crowd that congeal on the outside of the church to greet each other. The popsicle men position their carts at the gutter beside the sidewalk. “Chocolate!” Our popsicle man lifts up the metal cover and dry ice smoke billows into the muggy Sunday heat. Chocolate is best, then orange, last pineapple. If we wheedle, he might break off a bit of dry ice so we can pretend smoke or play Brigadoon, the ghost island.

Mom and dad invite foreigners visiting Ellinwood, so we never know who is coming to Sunday Dinner. Mom sets out her Irish lace tablecloth. Once a week, we get frozen fruit salad dissolving in 7up, and scoop out the cold fruit with Thai brass spoons that grandmother brought us. Our favorite aromas waft from the kitchen - breaded pork, steak Dianne or crisp fried chicken. Always, always white rice and green beans.

The grand feast of Sunday dinner is followed by the sacred lull of an afternoon of Rest Time, which mostly means mom can take time off until Sunday pizza, which she smothers with thick tomato paste, Vienna sausages, and Velveeta. We eat the pizza to drink Coke, our weekly ration. And the ultimate reward. We don't sing or pray, and we eat in front of the TV in the Airconditioned Room, watching Bonanza where we travel through the burning map to the Ponderosa. We munch, swig, and live Out West with the Cartwrights and Hop Sing. Then dad pats us out of The Airconditioned Room so he can watch The Fugitive, which we figure is x-rated since we never get to see it.

When we are teenagers, mom and Auntie Eva publish the thin red Filipino Family Cookbook with recipes from the SS Wright maternal mafia. By then, we've tested them against American versions, but none can compare to Sunday pizza on 1667 B Wright Street.

Quick pizza dough
1/4 cup warm water                                       1/2 cup cold water
21/2 tsp dry yeast                                          3 cups sifted flour
1 tsp sugar                                                    1 tsp salt
1/4 cup boiling water                                   1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp shortening

Dissolve 1 tsp sugar in 1/4 cup warm water. Sprinkle the yeast in slowly. Stir gently to dissolve. Set aside. Dissolve shortening in 1/4 cup of boiling water. Add cold water and cool to lukewarm. Add yeast mixture. Beat in sifted flour, salt, and 1 tbsp sugar. When blended let stand for 15 minutes. Divide into two parts. Flatten into pancakes and press to form 12” circles. Use pizza pans or cookie sheets. Brush with olive oil and add filling given below. Bake 12-20 minutes at 450 F.

Filling
4 tbsp cooking oil                   chopped onions
green pepper                          2 cups Vienna sausage
garlic 1 can tomato sauce
salt black or green olives
shredded cheese                    anchovy fillets
bay leaf pepper to taste

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

It rained the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The rain came as a surprise, for the rainy season is over, but when I closed my eyes the rain became snow. Though snow has no sound, the wind has, and the sound of wet branches creaking, and the feeling of something in the air can be taken for snow if you want it badly enough.

Snow on Christmas Eve is a glorious event. This hard rain would have been a real snow blizzard, making streets slippery, sending the children to the closets for snow suits, turning even ordinary shrubs into Christmas trees.

But rain on Christmas Eve wets the poinsettias blooming high by the fence. After the rain stops, children’s gowns must be carried to the church and the elaborate preparations for the crèche in the chancel viewed. Tonight is the Carol Service.

It’s 7:00pm. The children are gowned and seated in their risers behind the crèche. The lighting is lovely. Lilies Kapili hasn’t arrived yet! The adult choir is straggling in. I can’t get choir gowns for the candlebearers because she has the key to the cabinet.

The Carol Service is not going as well as dress rehearsal. But my “angels!” Scott, Kerry and Johanna are singing their hearts out. They look wonderful. Scott still has a choir-boy look. It’s his last year with it, probably. Kerry looks so pure, and Johanna’s long blond hair shines in the light. Johanna has a solo and she did it very well. The three of them, joined by Loius Panlilio are singing a two-part song. Margaret is supposed to sing the first verse alone. Slight mix up and she didn’t start off on the right note so all join her, then on the second verse (which she doesn’t know), Louie handed her a book so she could “read the words.” She’s 3.

10:00 pm. Christmas Eve. Present giving has never been more of a family affair. We have laughed over Johanna’s cleverly wrapped presents – a belt for school wrapped like a wreath, a charm for Kerry baked in a roll. Kerry’s red rubber gloves for me were this year’s example of her tradition of surprising gifts. Cresing and Annie thought the electric toothbrush for her was hilarious. There weren’t so many presents that theirs were insignificant. Only Margaret was deluged. She also gave presents to everyone – of her own choosing: toothbrushes and toothpaste for Scott, daddy and Johanna. Paints for Kerry, pencil sharpeners for Annie and Cresing, Scotch tape for me. They added to the merriment. I gave Dick paper mache wise men, and he gave me a box of special cookies that he loves. It was an Eve in which the mood was not magic but pleasure.

10:30pm Christmas Eve David Baradas and Dorothy Cleveland, a PCV friend arrive. The children sing for them. We all east stolen, ham sandwiches and Coke. Coke because it is hot tonight. It is good to hear about the adventures of a beginning anthropologist. We remember the Christmas together in Dayton. The outer trimmings are different, but their very differentness is the thread that holds our lives together.

CHRISTMAS DAY

We’re on our way to Baguio. I’m glad we chose to drive today. Without family to visit, there is not much to do on Christmas Day. Traffic is light. Families are out to visit. The children are so pretty in their colorful new clothes. That fairyland of dresses in Central Market has reached the streets.

Baguio has its own Christmas magic. In one day we have combined the gaiety, fun and sociability of a Philippine Christmas with the cosyness and intimacy of an American Christmas Dinner at Camp John Hay, which was turkey, mince pie, and apples. A rug on the floor, a formal white cloth on the table. There are stories and carols and prayers together in our snug cottages surrounded by silent pines.

THE DAY AFTER

I am tired. I’ve celebrated more fully than usual because it has been a shared celebration with many people. For the fist time it has not been a Christmas I’ve received or one I have given to others. It has been shared with the children in their own Christmas activities, shared with the church in its preparations, shared with friends in carols, parties, gifts, shared with our family in a host of preparations. I’m ready now to just be alone.

LATER

This year we’ve had two styles of Christmas. Other years, since I more or less controlled the celebrations, we tried to duplicate the mood of Christmases we knew.

The problem seemed to be how to capture the mood of magic, surprise, and silence that are essential to an American Christmas. There’s no hope of having those things in Manila! And we didn’t. We had a Philippine Christmas with its mood of fun, friendly gift exchange throughout the season, song and sociability. I don’t know what it has to do with the birth of Christ, but it’s good for the heart.

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Christmas 1961

2/19/2013

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Diosdado Macapagal is elected President

I.    Infancy

See the child?
        It is mine.
With black eyes and black hair and brown skin;
        It is mine.
It nurses there,
        wrapped in a basket of sawali walls, and bamboo floor.
        Banana leaves and palm warp the baby tight
        like suman.

There are many arms to rock my child,
Many arms to rock my child
Many arms to rock my child,
Many arms to rock to sleep.

But who can sleep?

                                  There is a sliding underground;
                                  The bamboo posts are shaken.
                                   My child will awaken,
                                   And the basket home is gone.

I.    Childhood

See the child?
        He is theirs.
In blue and white, an old school bag, and too few books.
        He is theirs.
He studies there,
        Bent in writing, taking notes, and memorizing.
        Goaded by exams, tuition, English syntax,
        graduation.

There are many things to pay for
Many things to pay for
Many things to pay for
Much for money to buy,

But who can pay?

                            There is a subtle obsolescence
                            to which the school does not react,
                            Their child—he knows each fact,
                            but the answer-book is wrong.

II.    Manhood

See the child?
        He is God’s.
With all his sin, and pride, and near-sightedness, and guilt,
        He is God’s.
He rarely prays;
        He does not know what angels say – he does not care –
Would not believe.
        The politicians sing. That is enough. They say it all.

There are many voices crying,
Many voices crying,
Many voices crying,
There are many voices taunting,

        “Is God there?”

                        Hear the slow and rising roll of history?
                        Its force is breaking on the shore.
                        God’s child – he is only man, no more.
                        But he does not know that God is there.

IV.     Life

See the child?
        We all can claim Him.
With the light of glory on Him, with the burden of the cross,
        We all can claim Him!
He is looking,
Looking for the lost ones – the ones who do not know
        there are not home;
        the evil ones, the crying ones, the anxious, fearful lost.

There are many who do not see Him
Many who can not hear Him
Many who can not hear Him,
Many who do not care.

But He has numbered every hair.

                        Through the murmuring, uneasy shifting
                        come the child’s redeeming story –
                        Glory, Glory, Glory, Glory,
                        Glory! is the fate of earth!

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Christmas 1970

Christmas 1967 – the last in Malate

Horned Bill, Reprise

Mom and the Contest at Mt Carmel

Sundays

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

Christmas 1961

Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

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Christmas 1970

Christmas 1967 – the last in Malate

Horned Bill, Reprise

Mom and the Contest at Mt Carmel

Sundays

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

Christmas 1961

Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

Archives

Categories

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard