Re-fattened

I killed and ate Santa Claus. Do not fret. I’m not a cannibal.

Mother used to say that I used to be fat. I was born fat but as I grew, it turned out that I was destined to be a skinny, not a fatso. This went perfectly with the decline of my sight. The same happened to my faith to Santa. It grew thin until its width is akin to a thread which I could barely see with my no-glasses eyes.

I could still how my mother suggested to me to write letters to Santa and hang stockings to our windows. Looking back, I could not believe how I fell to that trick because after we wrote the letters, my mother vanished into thin air. Of course, she went to the mall to buy "my wishes."

Night came; drowsy from the Noche Buena, I tucked myself into bed and cocooned myself into the blanket. Santa might be late due to traffic, Mother says. But little did "Santa" know that I was insomniac. Then I saw an adult’s shadow approaching our stockings and filling them with chocolates.

At first I thought it was a thief because there were cases of burglars disguising as Santa to fool children "home-aloned" by their parents. I stealthily took a wali-tambo, and hit Father Christmas until she squealed to reveal that she was my mother, done in placing a toy robot under the Christmas tree and putting new a goldfish in our aquarium.

As a child, anger surged from me. Tears sprinkling my eyes, I bellowed the word "fake." I did not even care that Mother was also crying while uncloaking the Santa attire and the pillow in her tummy. She fulfilled two out of three wishes-- a toy robot and a new goldfish. But she of course could not accomplish the last-- bringing the absent father who later in my life I realized should have been the Santa that night.

Since then, the fat bearded old man in red with sacks of gifts and reindeer-operated sleigh, is but a figurine. I stuffed my gray cells with the belief that people just rationalize the existence of such childish image and I jammed into me interrogatives. How could an old man live in North Pole with a factory of gifts? Who is Santa's mailman? How could the reindeers magically defy gravity? Most of all, how could he fit himself into a sizzling chimney?

I became a scrooge, turning the TV and lights off whenever I hear the voices of children caroling, and if caught, I have the choices: (a), giving them a "piso," (b) chanting the word "tawad," (c) demanding difficult songs, and if persistent (d), telling them that singing for money is an insincere way of celebrating the occasion. After all, our ninongs or ninangs were nowhere to be found. I was frustrated also in the misa de gallo as I soon discovered some religious hypocrites (prayerful inside, profane outside), and some who were simbang lugaw, simbang bibingka, simbang landi, simbang tabi.

Can the belief to Santa save the country from poverty and corruption? Can it even help us choose the right candidate? An atheist friend once raised, Christmas is for Christians and contrary to the common belief, it’s not the occasion everyone’s entitled to celebrate. A sociology teacher observed that people in crisis are more likely to believe in "invisible things" for they need something to cling onto.

I could still remember how a kababata named "Naomi" lost her mother from cancer and last time we talked, she would wake up every Christmas night to catch Santa because she believed that Santa took her mother away. She often cursed the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."

Her Grandma told me that in the night of the mother's death, the father who was abroad donned himself with Santa costume during his return. It just so happened that the mother fell ill after kissing "Santa." The father called for an ambulance and carried his wife to the hospital still wearing the outfit.

I could not even forget the fire, caused by defective Christmas lights, which took away the lives of two children. Aling "Belen" told her surviving daughter that Santa took her siblings to North Pole and that amid the smoke, she saw Saint Nick’s silhouette. Mang "Lito," the husband claimed that it was not Santa but Jesus who fetched the children, the same image in Daniel 3:14-29.

Santa was also the image of my kababata, "Joy" to the white-bearded foreigner to whom her mother was having an "affair" through the webcam. But of course, the neighbors know that the affair is nothing but business. I just hoped that time that "Joy" was not involved in the "affair."

And there were too many Santas but no one to gamble my faith on. Until one Friday.

On my way to a mall to buy a gift for our party, an old, bald, and coughing Santa-ish guy wearing a shirt and a Puruntong shorts sat beside me in the jeep. A kid came and distributed envelopes while singing "Santa Claus may Facebook ka ba?" To my astonishment, "Santa" clapped his hands to the beat of the song to match the kid's tambourine. He even turned himself into a conductor using his black umbrella. To everyone's surprise, when the song ended, he gave the boy 500 pesos plus an ensaymada. "Santa" showed the same energy when he left the jeep with "Merry Christmas!"

Going home, when I forgot to buy myself a new umbrella, I decided to buy it in a marketplace. I approached a boy and when I was about to pay for the umbrella (the color similar to "Santa's"), he called me "Santa" and smiled to me while adding "Thank you po talaga." The word "talaga" meant something. I asked him why.

He narrated how he needs the money to put his lolo in the home-for-the-aged facility. He said that his already senile lolo was roaming the streets and there were even times when he would see him in the jeepney terminal near the mall, coughing from fumes. He even added that his lolo was nowhere to be found at that time. "He wore an orange shirt and brought with him a black umbrella. I lost him earlier when I had to find a change for 1000 pesos. I would find him later.”

A connection came in me. Perhaps, it was just me who assume the connection between this boy and "Santa." But it was an epiphany.

I went home and if only I did not make the oath of donating some books to my alma mater since I cleaned my mini-library, I gave them to the boy. Nevertheless, I gave him an extra 50 pesos.

I just found "Santa" not in North Pole, but in me. I found him in the hopeful and hardworking people of every day.

I ate Santa but did not excrete him at all. He remained inside me, alongside my faith to Jesus who’s probably the shaved and thinner version of Santa.

I was blind but now I see, was thin but now re-fattened.