Ok, I should preface this with the statement that it’s NOT cold here. In fact, the only time I’m cold is when I’m on an overnight bus (oh the torture of the poor soul that forgets their hat and blanket on a night bus) or in an overly air-conditioned office.
Filipinos love Christmas. I think that people love all the schmaltzy aspects of christmas, like decorating and saccharine sweet pop carols on the radio, more than Americans do- and that’s a pretty tall order. But it’s true.
It is now officially Christmas season. In fact, it’s been Christmas season since September 1st. I remember walking into the grocery store in early September and hearing Händel’s Messiah playing over the loud speaker. Everywhere you go, the radio is inundated with carols and the Christmas decorations have been up for months. I was told, Christmas season is every month that ends in ‘ber’.
It’s been a long couple of months.
Among my fellow volunteers, we all complain that we’re going to go nuts if we here one more carol (and this complaining started in early October). I also think that it could be like this in the US, but it’s lucky that we’ve got Thanksgiving to stave off the green and red for a few months. Not to complain about the Christmas season and people enjoying the holidays, but it just seems a bit excessive to start SO EARLY. A girl in a store wished me a merry Christmas, in mid-September. Just a wee bit hasty, in my humble opinion.
The Christmas carols are something that I find ridiculously amusing here, since they get played much of the time in public places like malls and grocery stores. Today I heard “Let it snow!” and had a good chuckle. The irony was too much for me. People here think that anything below 60 degrees is cold. If there were actually snowy weather conditions, I think people would freak out. There is no such thing as central heating here, most people don’t even have a hot water heater much less insulated clothing…
Walmart has decided that it cannot take the hit from conservative groups that promise to boycott stores if Walmart continues with its inclusive “Happy Holidays” greetings instead of “Merry Christmas.”
In other news, Christians still dont realize that Christmas is actually a pagan holiday usurped for their own purpose and that noone really knows when JC was born.
Hope you get a snow day sometime soon :)
Haha! Stupid Walmart. It’s the devil, I tell you. There’s no Walmart here, but there is a suspiciously similar looking store in Manila called Walter Mart (or something like that).
Meanwhile, the only place it will snow here is in the Mall of Asia in Manila, where they have man-made snow that falls over the indoor ice skating rink.