by Jojo Soria de Veyra
Paskong Walang Digmaan (2004?). Christmas songs generally essay on the abstract peaceful and joyful mood of the season as well as the coldness of the monsoon wind. And when they do consider the yang (or dark) side of the equation, they usually point to personal relationships displaced by geo-economic necessity (the OFW father or mother singing home to his/her homeland-based wife or husband, for example) or relational dysfunction (misunderstandings and going away, etc.). Compared to Lei Garcia's Christmas song that appeared in the compilation A Christmas Prayer/Various Artists (produced by Noli Aurillo), such songs appear as either bourgeois or somewhat escapist.
Rare is Garcia's Christmas longing song that considers a macro-reality like war and conflict and struggle as a reality behind the overwhelming myth of Christian harmony in our land. One can almost breathe the conflict between mainstream Christianity and the sermons of an underground liberation theology, the differing concepts of justice and democracy among our people. This is a song that could be useful in such places as Northern Ireland, except that its language especially posits it in the Philippine landscape.
This is how songwriting for Filipinos should be, Christmas or not, painting a physical Filipino reality vis a vis the fantastic or utopian inner reality of our communal celebrations. In this song's case, if Christmas is a quasi-escapist atmosphere, Garcia contrasts that too-positive peaceful atmosphere with an acknowledgment of its opposite. Escapism/utopia versus the realism of justice's struggle.
The song's ready resolution is in the refrain acknowledgment of Christmas as by itself a real hoped-for state. A utopia of peace and joy as palatable as the abstract concepts of justice and equality.
This is not a simple longing for a lover-warrior on a Christmas day. It is a longing for a true Christian Christmas, kahit "malayo pa".
All this, packaged in the motherly voice of the singer and the catchy sad melody of the song my eight-year-old son sings along to. (2/05)
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