“What we see are picnics and family reunions, not piety nor prayer, not commemoration but celebration”
Allow me to dream the “impossible,” and propose something practical. Sure, my proposal goes against “tradition,” even the religiosity that we consider spiritual, or the conviviality we call cultural.
Take the holidays that Tagalogs call Undas, and the Bisaya call “Kalag-kalag.”
Most of us go through the ritual of trooping to the cemeteries where ancestors lie in graves that we clean up once a year, bearing flowers and lighting candles to remember them. We travel long distances at great expense to bond with relatives on the two holidays reserved for the dead. In the urban centers, all roads lead to cemeteries.
Pity those who lie in a Hagonoy cemetery which has been inundated with flood waters which have no intention to recede, thanks to government neglect. Patay na, nilulunod pa.
Elsewhere, candle makers and florists experience peak sales. For transport services from trains, bus, boats and planes, along with their terminals, it’s happy mayhem.
Yet what we see are picnics and family reunions, not piety nor prayer, not commemoration but celebration, often accompanied by overflowing food and alcohol surreptitiously imbibed due to LGU prohibitions..
The detritus left in the cemeteries after the two-day exercise insults ancestors just as it is a huge clean-up undertaking for the cemetery-keepers.
In my practical mind, why don’t we honor the memory of ancestors by visiting their graves on their birth or death anniversaries, instead of everybody trooping like a horde of “pious” revelers once a year?
The price of candles and flowers, even transport costs will be stable and traffic will normalize while remembering becomes personal and reflection becomes serene.
The Spaniards brought Dia de los Muertos from Mexico, an amalgam of pre-colonial ancestor worship and Catholic veneration of saints. From the Castillian “honrar” (to honor), we derived “undas.”
This writer understands that ancestor veneration is rooted upon belief in an after-life, whether among Christians or Buddhists, and other religions. Practices differ, but commemoration is universal.
My suggestion will likely be unpopular to many, though I have always criticized the surfeit of holidays that we have in this benighted land.
We have regular holidays, 10 for next year, as defined by the national government. Then we have special non-working holidays – Ninoy Aquino Day, All Saints Day and Immaculate Conception Day which are Catholic, and Dec. 31, “sandwiched” between Rizal’s death anniversary and New Year’s Day.
Also, there are the holidays for Eid al Fitr and Eid al Adha for our Muslim brothers, even a recently mandated Chinese New Year, the dates of which are movable.
Add to these Black Saturday, All Souls Day and Christmas Eve. How many of these holidays which are rooted in religion, dwarf those that commemorate the secular? Add more work-free days due to calamities, and floods brought about by “ghosts.”
And there are more!
Local governments celebrate their city or provincial “foundation” day, on top of the feast day of the patron saint that the Catholic Church has assigned to them. Why LGUs are given the power to declare their own holidays beats me.
Again, I posit something the Church will never accept: why not a national patron saint, whether the Nazareno or Santo Nino, instead of a multiplicity of holy days for every “santo patron?”
Or for that matter, why for heaven’s sake do we have localized fiestas at all, which even non-Catholics celebrate by gorging on food and drink, while even the “faithful” forget to attend Holy Mass, busy instead with gustatory preparations?
Ah, tradition, tradition, and I am a “killjoy.”
Now let’s think of the productivity losses brought about by this surfeit of holidays, and the added cost to employers of paying for no work, plus the inertia brought about by holiday expectation or holiday hang-over, not to forget our students bereft of learning.
The management genius who once upon a time brought life back to Detroit’s auto industry, Lee Iacocca, once said that better automobiles were those assembled on a Wednesday.
On Mondays, workers had hangovers from the week-end holiday, still feeling lazy; on Fridays they were looking forward to weekend relaxation.
Of course, assembly lines now use robots, who will soon take over our BPOs even after Trump’s back to America policy overtakes AI decimation of our service-dependent economy which in turn fuels our consumption-driven GNP along with the Filipino diaspora.
Then again, we have a president who is both laid back, given to relaxing in concerts and boxing matches despite boos and catcalls, while a haggard, hard-driven Cabinet member works to the death for “Utos ni Pangulo.”
What a country!
