Christmas gifts and wishes

I will be asleep when this column appears online. Still nursing indigestion from “noche buena” or Christmas Eve dinner. I must get up for Christmas Day lunch, another round of overeating followed by the opening of Christmas gifts. Everyone is thanked, of course, some gifts are to be consumed or used, others will be kept or recycled. One or two will continue to provide cheer during the 2025 “White Elephant Party.”

Certain gifts are staples at Christmas: ensaimada, bottles of wine, fruit cakes, personalized items, etc. Those who are too lazy to shop give cash, so the recipient can buy what he or she wants. Some gifts are signs of the times, I still have enough special face masks, scented hand wash, and sanitizers from the pandemic to last till 2030. Ensaimada was once the gift of the year, my favorites being the giant ones from Hizon’s that are bigger than 12-inch pizzas or Cunanan’s with the generous dusting of pulverized queso de bola. Another year it was thin-crust crispy okoy, one year it was scented candles. Some young historians should be taking notes, as Filipino gift-giving is worth a doctoral dissertation.

I often imagine what our 19th-century heroes wanted for Christmas. In 1896, all that Jose Rizal wanted in his cell in Fort Santiago was a visit from his defense lawyer. He was shot on Dec. 30, 1896. Also in 1896, I am sure Andres Bonifacio wished for the successful outcome of the Philippine revolution against Spain that he launched at the end of August. On May 10, 1897, Bonifacio, found guilty of treason, was executed somewhere in the Maragondon range. His remains have never been recovered.

Emilio Aguinaldo, who outlived all his enemies, who survived the Philippine revolution, the Philippine-American war, and the Japanese Occupation had many Christmas wishes. In 1897, his Christmas wish was for peace in his homeland as he laid down his arms and went into exile in Hong Kong following the Peace Treaty of Biak-na-Bato. In 1898, without consulting his advisers, Aguinaldo asked his countrymen to accept his resignation as president. The resignation was shelved, and Aguinaldo did not get the “aguinaldo” he wished for. In 1899, he was in flight deep in northern Luzon; he was pursued by the enemy. What did he wish for? According to Col. Simeon Villa: “One moonlit night the President [and others] agreed that once the independence of the country was declared, we would travel leisurely through Europe with a budget of one million pesos for expenses.” As a historian, I wish Aguinaldo had recorded all his Christmas wishes from 1898 to 1963. He died on Feb. 6, 1964 at the ripe old age of 94.

Historians can only imagine what Manuel Luis Quezon wished for during Christmas of 1941 as he faced the looming Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Did Jose P. Laurel wish for an end to World War II and an end to the Japanese Occupation at Christmas in 1944? I’m sure he could not have imagined the murder and pillage that the Japanese would rain on Manila in February 1945. Manuel Roxas in Christmas 1947 faced the postwar reconstruction of the Philippines. What did he wish for? What did Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. wish for in Christmas 1971, the year before he declared martial law? What did he wish for in Christmas 1985, running against Corazon Aquino in the 1986 snap election? Edsa People Power Revolution was beyond his imagination and everything he planned for. What did our great men and women wish for at turning points in our history?

Two turning points in my life occurred around Christmas. In 1986, the director of the Goethe Institut in Manila asked: “Do you want to spend Christmas in Germany?” What followed was a language grant that opened my research to 19th-century German involvement in the Philippines. In 1999, I wished for six months in the United States Library of Congress to read and got a Fulbright Senior Research Scholarship in 2000 that allowed me to do research on the Philippines in the Library of Congress in Washington, the New York Public Library, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Bentley Historical Library in the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

This Christmas, I still wish for six months to read in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville or the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico or again at the Library of Congress. Travel being more stressful these days, I pared down my 2024 Christmas wish to work from home. I wish for online access to digitized primary source material from repositories at home and abroad. I wish for artificial intellegence (AI) tools that accurately transcribe handwritten documents or early printed books. I wish for AI tools that sort documents by keywords to extract more from texts. We do not have a concordance to Rizal’s works. How many times does he use the words: Filipinas, Filipinos, Kalayaan, independencia, nacion, or bayan in his writings? In what contexts? Lastly, in my twilight, I wish for younger historians who will help or continue my research.

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