Christmas morn

By the time many of you read this, it’s probably late in the morning, maybe an hour or so before Christmas Day noon.

Fortunately, there were some of us who awoke, by habit, before sunrise on a transformative day like this and coffee in hand, relished the measured lifting of the curtain of darkness in the silence of another, thankfully, tranquil Christmas dawn.

A little later, some of you may have sauntered around the neighborhood a bit, bathing in the crisply comfortable 25-C tropical coolness hinting of an afternoon shower.

And some, as the sun gingerly began its ethereal rise at 6:19 a.m. in the eastern horizon, would have stopped to pay their respects to the sunrise’s festive serenade, the hues glowing from the deeper-toned “dalandan” orange into the lighter, brighter “dalanghita” orange.

In that little instant of bathing in the early morning light and coolness comes to mind the beautiful Filipino words “bukang liwayway” or simply “liwayway,” which sound far more exquisite than the everyday “pagsikat ng araw.”

The French, too, have a lovely word for the dawn or early morning serenade — “Aubade.”

“Aubade” initially was meant as a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn, but it later blossomed into songs sung in the morning hours.

But, as always, seeing comes before the words, as the admirable writer John Berger often insisted.

Each morning of the season, paraphrasing Berge, we see the sun rise. We know that the Earth is turning towards it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.

The same unrequited enigma goes too for last night’s overlooked moon. Amid the familial warmth of the traditional Noche Buena, when most of us had slim chances at glancing at the cloudy night sky, was the forgotten Christmas Eve’s crescent moon.

Unbeheld, though, was the crescent moon’s presence and its quiet, gentle reminder of hope in these trying times; the crescent moon nevertheless generously charmed even the most modest Noche Buena.

The moon’s waxing crescent phase, coming right after the New Moon, is often referred to as the rebuilding phase.

Once the moon re-emerged with new energies during its crescent phase in the past few nights, including the solstice, Christmas Eve became the perfect setting for musing on one’s hopes and desires, which by the time New Year’s Day rolls around could hopefully be firmly in hand.

Spiritually then, the crescent moon’s gentle glow “teaches profound spiritual lessons about the cyclical nature of life and our capacity for growth and transformation.”

If the meanings of the natural lights of the Christmas moon and the early Christmas morning help us in seeing what’s really always been there, we might as well be mindful, too of how we commonly greet Christmas.

“Merry Christmas” by itself is the most wholesome greeting we use today. A simple and direct expression of warm comradely cheer, we reserve “merry” for Christmas. Have you not noticed we don’t greet “Merry Easter” or “Merry Birthday?”

Anyway, if you happen to have a taste for inspecting Western cultural mores, it turns out that the Englishman/woman prefers using “Happy Christmas” instead of “Merry Christmas” that the American-born man/woman heartedly endorses for the rest of the world.

We intrepid Filipinos, meanwhile, smartly skirt the English language wars on the Christmas Day greeting by having the best of both worlds. Our nebulous “maligayang” means both happy and cheery at the same time.

Thus, on this day it is still best to greet you: “Maligayang Pasko po!”