It’s Christmas time again and it would be nice to share a Yuletide memory that never fails to bring about a feeling that is akin to a mellow heartburn and a lilting of the pulse that refuses to calm down. I have searched my mind for past images of Christmas mornings…Christmases of a young boy who still believed in Santa Claus.

Despite the time lapse of nearly six decades I can recall a few memories that have stayed glowing and alive in my mind. The most vivid and vibrant was the image of a robust green pine tree with glittering tinsels and bedecked with all sorts of figurines of the Yule season. I remember during my childhood we always had a Christmas tree where we used to hang our socks with hopeful letters to Santa Claus, telling him how good we’ve been and what we would like for Christmas. I would hang my sock in a branch that was the most conspicuous place in the tree…at Santa’s eye level. Our tree was always a fresh Baguio Pine that one could buy only during the Yuletide season in the late forties and on to the fifties. They have long since stopped cutting down the trees because conservationists were afraid that after a while the cutters will make extinct this pine species because of indiscriminate cutting. Lately the threat of its extinction is posed, not by Christmas commerce but by the expanding city population in Baguio City. They have cut down the trees in the hills near the city as clearings for house clusters. I hope something is done to stem this increasing environmental urban abuse.

The Baguio Pine has a scent which one easily associates with Christmas and the pine needles are so much greener and lusher than the foliage of the Agojo Pine, a species found in the lowlands. Instead of a real tree, a lot of ersatz Christmas trees can now be bought from department stores. You have the expensive plastic ones, the white painted wooden ones and some are in stylized polystyrene, twigs and metal scraps. None of them could evoke warm Christmas feelings like the Baguio Pine could. It is the distinct smell of pine resin that sends little kids’ hearts aflutter as it wafts pervasively in the cool air of the December month.

The buying of the tree was an event that I looked forward to. I would tag along with my older brother, Tito, to go to a vacant lot in the corner of Governor Forbes Street after the turn from Espana Street where a big open truck would be unloading cut branches of Baguio Pine to sell as fresh Christmas trees. We would select a medium sized one and one that would have the best conical shape. To get the best looking tree one had to go there early otherwise what would be left of the lot would be the scraggly ones and the ones whose branches were just nailed together to look like a tree.

Bringing home the tree was a pleasure. My brother would put on his shoulder the heavy lower part of the tree while I would hold on to the top part walking behind my brother to prevent the tree from swishing. I would proudly march in the tiny eskinita where we live and enjoying all the while the nice comments of our neighbors, especially the kids as we passed them on the way home.

My older brothers would do a bit of carpentry work to put together the base for propping up the tree. The box shaped base would be filled with rocks to make it stable enough to hold the tree upright then it would be covered with Christmas wrapping paper making it look like a big gift box. My sisters would bring out the tree decorations from out of storage, dust them and start hanging them on the branches.

There was a wide assortment of decorative materials. Plastic Christmas balls colored metallic red, green and blue, angels grouped together as a choir, funny looking thin Santas made out of pipe stem cleaners, bells of different sizes, plastic reindeers and metallic ribbons wound around the tree. The last to be done were the Christmas lights. My elder brothers were in charge of checking all the light bulbs, the wiring, replacing burned out bulbs and connecting two sets of Christmas lights together before stringing them up in the branches.

Now what would Christmas be without snow? A final touch is added on the sagged branches, weighed down by reindeers, colored balls, thin Santas etc…lumpy clumps of cotton sparsely spread on the pine needles looking like a collection of snow flurries precariously resting on bent branches. Nowadays snow would be available in spray cans and would look authentic enough. But during those days the wads of cotton was the only thing useable and they were effective in creating a wintry ambience, more or less.

Capping the activity was topping the tree with a big tinsel star, a privilege given to the youngest sibling, Angge, who was four at that time.My brothers, Dado and Pete, would put on a new stylus in the RCA phonograph and play Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. We would all take a step backward for a full view of our creation and looking at each other with smiles as if in congratulation and feeling good about the familial handiwork. At that point my Mom and Dad would bring out the wrapped presents from underneath their bed and lay them down at the base of our magnificent tree with the admonition to all to refrain from peeking at the names on the tags until Christmas morning.

I cannot remember a merrier Christmas than that. It was my misfortune that I had to grow up, be wiser, responsible and become an adult. These are the changes in life that make it difficult for one to go back to the simple and unadulterated pleasures of a once upon a time Christmas, of bringing home a fresh pine tree, of cotton fluffs as snow wadded on branches, thin Santa Clauses, of plastic bells and angels, metallic ribbons and tinsel stars and of a scratchy record playing Bing Crosby’s White Christmas