MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYBODY! MAY God grant you many more merry Christmases to come.

* * *

This is that time of the year when many people not only look forward to Christmas and the New Year but look back at Christmases past. I am one of them. The memory of those happy Christmases bring back the happiness one felt back then.

Lately, I have been looking back at the ghosts of Christmases past when my three children were still toddlers and believed in Santa Claus. They are all grown-up now with their careers, and I have two lovely grandchildren, both girls. Looking back, I almost wish I could turn back the hands of time and go back to those days when our children were small and clung to us, and we thought they were the best, brightest and most beautiful children in the world. I am sure our readers have their own happy memories of past Christmases.

As in many other families, the peak of the holiday season is the night when we give the Christmas tree the trim. Christmas trees you can buy now from department stores look like pine trees or other evergreen from temperate countries. One store here even sells real pine trees imported from Canada. Credit it to the Christmas cards, the calendars, the advertisements, the movies and television, the idea of Filipinos of Christmas trees in a hot tropical country like the Philippines, is that of evergreen trees covered with snow. The makers of Christmas trees out of driftwood who sell them on Roxas Boulevard, even paint them white to look like they are covered with snow.

But back when I was in grade school, the school Christmas tree was what was readily available: a mangrove tree because the river banks in Malabon back then were lined with thick stands of mangrove. The school principal would ask the biggest boys to cut a Christmas tree. Hours later, they would come back, sweating and puffing, dragging a mangrove tree behind them.

The tree was set up on the porch of the school and we all pitched in to decorate it. We would hang our gifts?with the names of those to whom we are giving the gifts clearly written on them?from the branches of the tree. During our Christmas party, when all of us would be gathered on the grounds below the porch, the teachers would pick the gifts from the tree branches one by one and call out the names written on them. Those called went up the stairs and claimed their gifts.

Many years later, when we were all grown-up and had families and little children of our own, I cut the tops from two bamboo trees growing in our front yard, tied them together, removed the leaves, and we had our first Christmas tree.

We decorated them with cut colored cardboards, and white styrofoam packaging. They were cut into the shapes of stars, bells and flowers and hung from the branches. We also wrapped matches and other small empty boxes in colorful Christmas paper and used them as decorations.

Still years later, when we had three children, we had a store-bought Christmas tree and store-bought decorations which were, as expected, Western: Santa Claus, reindeer, snowflakes, winter boots and candy canes, colorful, gleaming Christmas balls, plastic poinsettias, icicles, etc.

More years later, when our children were grown-up and travelling abroad, they brought back Christmas decorations as souvenirs, and soon we had much more than we could use. The tree groaned under the weight of too many decorations. New decorations replaced old ones. I felt so sorry for the latter that I wrote a short story about an old Christmas tree and its decorations that made the children of the family so happy when they were small. When the children grew up, however, they bought a new Christmas tree and decorations and the old dusty ones were thrown away. To end the story happily, the discarded tree and decorations were found in the garbage heap by a scavenger family who took them home to their squatter shanty. Now they were making the young children of the squatter family very happy.

But back to my family when my kids were small. Trimming the tree was a big thing for us. Everybody pitched in, hanging his or her favorite decorations from choice places on the tree.

It usually took us the whole night to finish the trimming. Afterwards, we would sit back and admire our handiwork, making adjustments here and there. My wife would make some chocolate drink and bring out the ensaymada she had bought earlier and serve them to us. We would all sit on the floor and watch the multi-colored lights blink on and off the tree.

On Christmas Eve, we would, one by one, quietly put our gifts under the tree while the others were asleep. The children still left snacks on the dining room table for Santa, and we parents labeled our gifts to them as coming from Santa.

On Christmas morning, the children would wake up early, creep to the top of the stairs and look down at the tree in the sala. When they saw the gift-wrapped packages under the tree, they would all rush down the stairs and look for their gifts.

The wife and I would be listening in our bedroom. Later we would go down the stairs to look for our own gifts.

We would sit on the floor, around the tree, and open our gifts. There would be screams of delight as the gifts they had been yearning were unwrapped. Then one by one, the children would go to the gift-giver, hug and kiss him or her with a lot of thank you?s. When the gift purportedly comes from Santa, the recipient looked up and said, ?Thank you, Santa.?

One Christmas morning, my little son, his eyes twinkling with happiness, said he heard the hoofs of Santa?s reindeer tapping on the roof, but did not actually see the fat man enter through the open window.

Such happy memories are the ghosts of Christmases past.