Christmas carols

Ia'M waiting again. Not in line this time, but in a comfortable air conditioned room with large flat screen tv in front of me. The room is artful, decorated in shades of mocha and silver. On the center table, tiny teddy bears with Santa hats are carelessly strewn on a candy holder. Beside this arrangement is a pile of travel magazines.

I sigh. Christmas songs have been playing non stop since I've been here. Chiara says it's like a form of torture. Somehow it does seem so. I've been hearing these songs in almost all the business establishments I've been to. Since September this year. Every September until December. Of every year. For the past how many decades.

The songs make me nostalgic, remind me of gifts and happy Christmases, and funny Christmases, and of one particular Christmas when I was about 6 years old. We were new in the neighborhood, and had just begun building friendships with kids my age and my sibling's ages.

That year, our age group decided to go caroling. I think there were about 5 of us, including my younger sister Jean.

So off we went, and the people in the houses gave us money except for those in one house. We were then in a different street from our place, where the houses were bigger, and their frontages were more heavily decorated with Christmas lights.

Some of those we had sang to previously gave us 25 centavos, 10 centavos, 5 centavos. Mind you, in those days, a bottle of coke was less than 15 centavos. And 5 centavos could buy you a lot of candy.

Back to that last house. It was a large one with a Christmas wreath on their screen door. I remember it had a fireplace at the side.

We must have sang our practiced medley more than 5 times, but no one made an appearance. We could hear movement inside the house. But they were deliberately ignoring us. And young as we were, we got the message.