MANY middle-class Filipinos must still be feeling a "Holy Week hangover," coming down from the "high" of a week--or at least several days--spent decompressing, taking a break, and enjoying some bonding time with family and friends.
Of course, a generation or so ago, we would instead still be recovering from the "low" of spending the hottest days of summer cooped up in our homes, banned from laughing, playing music or just enjoying ourselves. We were supposed to be mulling, instead, the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and to help our imaginations along, there were the countless Ways of the Cross, the senakulo or staged presentation of Christ's last days, the pasyon or chanted reflections on the suffering of Christ, the re-enactment of the Washing of the Feet, and the Good Friday procession, featuring a costumed "Christ" dragging a heavy wooden cross and besieged by masked "centurions."
The way we celebrate Holy Week these days must be a reaction to a childhood spent in the gloomy confines of an observant Catholic home. Our generation's observance of Holy Week is positively pagan, spent basking under the sun on the beach, frolicking in parks and camp grounds, or else cruising the suddenly empty streets of Metro Manila.
Our own family spent Holy Week in Tagaytay and environs. Much of the week was spent bemoaning the traffic that tied up much of Aguinaldo Highway, as relatives and friends, who drove up to our homes in waves, would arrive complaining about the hours spent on the road, especially those spent crawling along the four-lane Aguinaldo Highway. Some relatives even drove up all the way from Pangasinan, leaving at four in the morning and finally arriving around 11 a.m.
* * *
DESPITE the traffic, Tagaytay and environs were packed with visitors. Our friends Mark and Linda Floro, who parlayed the huge success of their restaurant Buon Giorno at the Cliff House complex into a second branch along Shaw Boulevard in Mandaluyong, mock-complained about the record crowds they were getting. "Even as we were about to close up around 10 p.m.," recounted Mark, "we still had people coming in for a late dinner." Other customers would drop in late in the afternoon, not for merienda but for early dinner of pasta and even steak.
At Sonya's Secret Garden--which is no longer a secret but a major destination for Tagaytay day-trippers--the staff reported that they had been kept busy for much of Holy Week, their busiest day being Good Friday. And even on Black Saturday, they said, Sonya's played host to two weddings!
Driving back to our home from Sonya's, we had planned to drop by Amira's, home of the famous buko tart, so our Pangasinan-based cousins could stock up on pasalubong. Instead we found the place already closed, because, the staff said, they had already run out of merchandise for sale.
I'm sure the Tagaytay scenario was repeated elsewhere in the country last week, as any place with even the slightest smidgen of a beach, or a little elevation that offered a cooler clime than the sweltering city, enjoyed an influx of city-based visitors. But as city-dwellers point out time and again, the best place to be during Holy Week is in the city, when one has the time and the space to enjoy the place's charms that hectic schedules and crowds don't allow.
* * *
THIS year's Holy Week observance was special for us because first, it marked the first time we were spending the occasion in our weekend home. And second, we were joined by family, including my sister Chona and her husband Willie who are in the country to attend the graduation next week of their son Rico from the Ateneo.
Easter Sunday, we jointly hosted a graduation party for Rico and for Miya, our daughter who is graduating next month from UP Diliman.
We did find time for religious obligations, attending the Easter Vigil rites held at the nearby convent of a contemplative order of nuns. But when my sister-in-law Coratec invited us to go to Mass on Easter Sunday, most of us resisted, insisting that the Easter Vigil rites were already an "anticipated Mass." Obviously, there are limits to religiosity.
Before this, we had spent the days of supposed "quiet" chatting among ourselves or, in the case of the teenagers, shouting themselves hoarse as they competed in various Wii games.
And as usual with our family, we spent hours and hours either cooking or eating, enjoying lunch under the trees in our garden, nibbling on snack items and guzzling enough soda to fill several swimming pools. It was interesting to watch members of our family join and break off from the group--some looking for an unoccupied corner to nap or read, one taking it upon herself to water the plants, and others to escape to the bedroom to indulge in favorite Koreanovelas, movies on DVD or the Discovery Channel.
It doesn't sound much like a vacation, but then isn't that what being with family means, just enjoying each other's company and indulging in shared memories and old stories that bear repeating, again and again?
* * *
AN AUNT of ours observed that if our parents were still alive, they would be "shocked" by the way we observe Holy Week these days. I happen to think that my parents would go along with the way things are. Life is different these days, after all, and Holy Week promises a way of celebrating family, observing togetherness while nodding in the direction of the Church and organized religion. There's a reason we greet each other a Happy Easter!
