SURELY, the Christmas season, which started two full months ago (in our country, at least), will once again attract a steady flock of visitors like migrant birds on their way south to escape the winter.
From October to November, try asking any hotelier or resort owner, and they’ll excitedly confirm that bookings and reservations are already at near full capacity, and they’ll swear a peak season is promised once again.
Those two words, peak season, once sounded funny to the ears, considering only five years ago, that particular time in our history was indelibly marked with an asterisk, as I’ve seen in the calendars of some beach owners.
Anyhow, who among us still has COVID on their mind? It may have been unforgettable back then since it affected the whole world, but just the same, how easily we have moved on from that dark time.
As that threat had become a thing of the past, “peak season” once again has a nice cash register ring to it. I recall in December of ‘21, it was amusing to hear from a taxi driver how he welcomed Christmastime, as though it were a sourly missed lover, and praying that it comes again.
Well, if I met him again, I’d say his prayers are finally answered.
However, not everything is rosy at the moment. For one, it’s in the back of everyone’s minds, how do we make 2025 worthy of celebration when prices are at an all-time high, while the peso has plunged to its lowest?
Already, all are aware that an economic storm has been continually brewing, resulting not only from prolonged political discourse and bickering in the halls of power, but also made more hideous by confirmed reports of widespread corruption and open thievery in that arena, thus draining the government coffers.
Reminds me of a cartoon I saw long ago. A child had asked, ‘Mom, what’s the trickle-down effect?’ The mom replied, ‘It’s when the one percent of the population gets all of the pieces of the economic pie. ’ The child continued, ‘then what?’ The mom said, ‘That’s it. The end.’
If that were not enough, as if to complete the slam-bang in our people’s lives, much of the country, in these months of October and November alone, has been battered by a continuous parade of typhoons and deadly earthquakes which not only wreaked havoc on various cities and provinces but also resulted in damage to property and claimed many lives as well.
On a personal note, our family has lost a dear, dear one on the last day of October. At this, for us, all that has transpired anywhere takes a backseat as the family circled our wagons while the alternating storms outside howled at the gates.
This year-end for us, with all its trimmings of promise and expectations, achieved goals and sated dreams, mixed with turmoil and disasters, is not that important for the moment. As I told my grieving niece, we bleed as one. And nothing else beats that.
