feedback from Sonny Espejo

SONNY REMEMBERS SEMANA SANTA

You opened a floodgate of memories with this piece. Semana Santa always was a special week despite its melancholy tones then. Baguio holidays, beach parties were yet unknown - just  folksy but very solemn observance of a religious event. Looking back, those days were simply beautiful.

 

My "old days"  probably are 15 to 20 years after yours as electricity is already around (although in dupac, it was still 2 posts away from our house) when I  become aware of the semana santa. As a young boy, I always regarded these holy days with much awe and reverence. The old folks, I remember, undergo sudden transformation and spend these days in religious fervor bordering on superstitious belief - which is quite nice sometimes because the usual din in the barrio is replaced with hushed tones. Kids are forbidden from laughing and shouting and engaging in physical games or from any of the strenuous activities young rascals love to do. You could not even climb for the ripe kaimitos and sineguelas. I badgered my Grandmother for an explanation and she told me that these were all in mournful sympathy with the suffering of Jesus under the hands of the hudyo and so I better behave myself or I would become one of them. The hudyo had become so villainized that the threat to be turned into one is enough to keep us boys into playing sungka with the girls rather than engaging in our preferred rowdy and boisterous games of patentiro or pinnaltugan. Even the AM radio stations then would play only religious music or slow instrumental pieces. All you could hear were the soulful and lilting lamentations of the Pasyon singers of the Pabasa usually done in Apong Olang's (Quillopas) place. The Quillopas compound were then our version of the barangay plaza because of their wide and concreted front yard and the sari-sari store where folks could buy their daily supply.  

 

There is also this weird concept of the kering, a brief period (real or imagined) of holy Wednesday when the wind would keep still – so still that you couldn't see a single leaf waving. Be warned from taking a bath at this hour lest you would be afflicted with jerky head movements! But my cousins and I had a great laugh when we caught my Apong Pedro (my uncle BenHurs father) shaking the branches while taking a bath. If the wind refuses to blow, then you can take matters in your own hands!

 

The centerpiece of the event for me then is the Libot - procession of saints borne on decorated carriages  decked with flowers, pulled by the townspeople around the Poblacion and accompanied by a marching band – same group that escorts and plays for funerals. The procession includes among others the likeness of San Pedro and his crowing rooster (that's how literal we, Catholics could get - he he he), Santa Veronica with her miraculous cloth, the grieving Virgin Mary, the Cross-bearing Christ on Maundy Thursday and the Holy Sepulcher on Holy Friday. I remember one of my cousins single-handedly stopping the procession one time when he inadvertently stepped and caused the snapping of the electric wires connecting the lightings of the carriages and the mobile genset of the Estrada Sound system that tags along.

 

Me and my playmates would save some money in advance so that we could walk all the way to town (yes, walking was still fashionable then) and join the Libot on the afternoons of Huebes Santo and Viernes Santo. Not that you need money for the Libot, but you should have something for the snacks and rides in the plaza afterwards. The Asingan town fiesta is traditionally just after the Holy week so that by that time, the plaza is already full of assorted food stands, rides and amusements but also BINGO and gambling tents. Money was always scarce and I never had enough to start with but I'm lucky to have a best friend with a rich grandpa. Reynold and I would run from our companions until we would lose them and then we would sit and haunch over a table incognito inside one of the temporary panciteria or halo-halo stands. We would stay in the plaza until it gets dark enough so then we could watch feel-good, black and white movies in one of those lupisak theaters. For just 30 centavos, and you get to watch Fernando Poe, Jr or Joseph Estrada or Tony Ferrer fight triumphantly for justice and freedom.

 

Childish faith. Simple wants, simple needs… those were the days.

 

SONNY ESPEJO