Of Christmas Carols

The sun was setting and I had just come home from a day of work. It was a gym day so inasmuch as I want to take a good rest and continue reading Shanghai Girls, I just couldn't.


I hurried inside the house and plopped my bag on the sofa, took off my shirt, went in the bathroom to take off my pants and slipped a pair of boxers, and turned on the TV. Fairly Oddparents was broadcasting that time. A few minutes later I took out my dinner before hitting the gym - three pieces of chicken hotdog and a cup of rice. I placed the hotdogs inside the toaster and set it for 10 minutes and resumed watching the cartoons.


"Whenever I see girls and boys selling lanterns on the street..."


I sighed. I heard it all right and I don't even want to bother myself going out and handing them some coins.


"I remember the child, in the manger as he sleeps..."


But they are persistent kids. Kids who will irritate you until you give them coins.


As they continued their business outside, I realized how time flew by real fast when I was a kid.


I remembered I used to carol too, me, my older sister, and my neighboring friends. It was an annual tradition for us. One of my friends would happily drop by each and every one of our houses and we would form an indispensable group of carolers. The toughest (or maybe the sole) of the bunch. We would go around our part of our subdivision and stand in front of every prospective house and sing our hearts out. I don't even mind being the second voice because honestly I don't have the voice to begin with.


Then I snapped back to reality. And I compared how we used to carol and how kids carol these days.


We used to carol for fun, for comfort, for kicks, and yes, for money too but money was our last option. We didn't care if we made small or big that day. What we were thinking was that we were together, we were singing, laughing, and fooling with each other and being paid for that!


Kids nowadays, first of all, don't sing, they scream. I kid you not. They literally just scream with their pseudo-musical instruments, they scream a few tunes, and voila! They expect you to dole out for their underwhelming performance. And don't even get me started on them buzzing your house even when they literally see the lights off inside.


The joy that bonding friends used to bring when we were small was incomparable. That was what I treasured and what I liked the most about the holidays; because of our busy school schedules, we barely see each other but come Christmas vacation and every night during the holidays, we huddle up and catch up. But kids these days don't even seem to know the reason why they carol. If they think they need to scream, disturb, and pester people because they need to have some money by Christmas, then there really would a problem when they grow up.


As the kids outside and their disturbing performance made a halt and were asking for what their voices were worth, I got my gym bag, got some money from the stack of coins we pile up during caroling time, and gave them five pesos.