FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

…and I’m lovin’ it!

Cynics and Scrooges will retch when I say that Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. Of course it helps that I celebrate a bunch of other things during that time (my birthday, anniversary, my boyfriend’s birthday…it’s what we call our fourth-quarter storm. Haha), so I’m extra happy, but even if there were nothing but Christmas to celebrate, I’d still be happy, happy, happy! (Ebenezers of the world, unite and gag!)

I’m not the type to sing Christmas carols as soon as the first of September rolls around. But by this month, I start making my Christmas list. Not my wish list, but my list as in, “He’s making a list and checking it twice.” I whip out a pen and paper and start jotting down the names of people I want to give Christmas gifts to. I even divide them into neat little categories: family, barkada, co-workers, former co-workers, etc. There were a couple of years when I even went semi-high-tech and printed out my list. For some reason, I liked having long lists, rather than one compact sheet of paper, so I made two columns, cut the sheets down the middle, and taped the ends together.

My Christmas list gets me thinking about the people I got close to that year, the ones I wanted to show that they had a special place in my life (even if it was equivalent to a small bag of teeny homemade cookies…It’s the thought, right?). It also helps me do the math and figure out how much I have to save to be able to afford all the gifts I want to give. Most of all, my Christmas list keeps me sane.

In fact, lists in general keep me sane. As a car commercial made me realize a few months ago, people make lists because it allows them to feel like they’re in control of their lives. So whenever I feel like I’ve got too much on my plate, I just make a list to bring some sort of order amid all the chaos. I make shopping lists, pullout lists, lists with diagrams… My to-do list has little squares beside each task that I check off one by one (I’m staring at one beside me as I type. This entry is to-do number 2! Haha). To me, Christmas lists are a form of escape. I’d do it all year round, but that’s just too weird. I feel a bit more normal doing it come the –ber months!

When I was younger, one of the things on my Christmas to-do list was to go to Greenhills (pre-Theatre Mall and Promenade, and when V Mall was still Virra Mall) each year to go see the diorama of the Christmas scene. It sucked that my birthday portrayed the slaughter of the innocents, but the whole setup was pretty nonetheless. The diorama is gone, but it’s been replaced by another list (of course) of other Christmas-y things to do:

Attend Simbang Gabi at the Church of the Gesu, so pretty with all the parols hanging from the trees…

…and afterwards feast on freshly made bibingka while enjoying the cool December air…

…and later on, lie on the floor beneath our Christmas tree to stare up at the twinkling lights.

I got this idea from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The view’s quite pretty, but instead of that fresh pine scent, you get a whiff of plastic! Oh well.

I’m getting that happy, tingly feeling just thinking about it! Altogether now: “Deck the halls with boughs of holly, falalalala lala la la…”

(OK, so I do break into song every now and then…)