A letter to Santa Claus

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Part of The Carolinian

Title: A letter to Santa Claus
extracted text: CATHOLIC ACTION puMt THE GREATNESS OF RIZAL A LETTER TO SANTA CLAUS st. nick, old friend, do you remember a year ago on Christmas eve — the question i asked you — the puzzling enigma of my existence in a world where i could never seem to find a place, too busy in things that didn’t really matter, i missed like so many others the answer staring me in the face that my place is any place, anytime ivhere i can find Him. in a few days, the bell of Christmas will ring again—joyous and vibrant in all the churchtowers that rise into the sky. spires that thrust their crowns into the clouds — just like all of us when we are happy, i don’t know why, i go all soft and hopelessly sentimental when i think of Christmas, perhaps it’s because the strange faces around me are softer, their eyes more gentle — softened by memories of many many Christmases, both happy and clouded in sadness. Christmas is about the only time in the calendar that we allow a little show of life, a crack in the walls of our defenses as we let go of a little tenderness when we send a card or a gift — without feeling like a darn fool, "there is a kind of silence in which the hard thick shell which normally cover and protects us, the thick shell of fiction and prejudice and ready-made phrases which separates man from man begins to crack and open.” yesterday, one of my friends glanced up at the sky from a third floor window and muttered something about — "holy cow, look at that sky! terrific! the shade of that blue ... i can’t stand it!” and broke off into a rough cowboy strain about "the wide open spaces that i love” .. . today while crossing use to the oriental book store opposite, tito cursed savagely when he saw a grimy slum kid miss the cruel ivheels of a speeding jeepney by a fraction of an inch as he darted for a handful of peanuts that spilled from his pockets, "oh God, no!”, a flash, of that protective spark latent in all men for the helpless sprang to his lips, startled by such a manifestation of nobility from these renegades, we fell silent and felt very small. tough hombres, eh pardners? guess again... why are men such anachronisms? why do they hide their kindness in thick coatings of anger, boredom and casual indifference that hints nothing of its gilded walls? cigarettes are crushed out in piles of smoking embers and top tunes thunder in their brains while the seeds of immortality are pushed deeper and locked up inside themselves, my classmate tells me i pretend but i do not deny it. with eyes that see too truthfully and with a frightfully accurate analysis he tells me i act as tho’ i don’t care although i don’t always sound like that — in my saner moments perhaps, i act. but so does everyone, we all pretend we are strong and don't need you or anybody — very sure of ourselves but you — you see into us with a piercing depth that most of it is just a show in our efforts to convince a world to accept us — in fear of its demands, in fear of not being a measure to all we are. trapped in "a period which has overdeveloped its brains and lost its heart" — we pretend for many reasons, we pretend we have no feelings, that we don’t care because it seems silly to get mushy over a few lines of poetry, we get ashamed that ive find a sunrise beautiful as if it was the sunrise’s fault, crybabies, sentimentalists, dreamers, we fear such ridicule as though the ravings of the multitude were any d... .n criterion! (God and i from the majority?) we pretend because we shrink from any too open display of emotion especially (Continued on page 24) EDITOR'S NOTE: The following- is the prize-winning oration of Mr. MANUEL S. GO, a first year student of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which won the Don Sergio Osmena GOLD ME DAL in the Fifth Annual Inter collegiate Orational Tilt sponsored by the Pre-I.aw class organization held at the USC Girls’ High School Social Hall on November 30. W HENEVER we recall the memory of Dr. Jose Riial, soul and symbol of the Filipino nation, pride and pillar of the Malayan race, we become immediately aware of the presence of an overwhelm ing power, the influence of a mighty force. It is because we all feel so small in the face of him so great. We all have certain ideas about this greatness. To some of us, it is a greatness compounded from the glowing personal attributes of the man and his glorious accomplishments seldom, if at all, achieved by any single individual in the span of a lifetime. For Dr. Riial was a genius of higher order. His genius made him an artist, a scientist, a lin guist, a poet, a writer, a historian, a philosopher; and in each of these fields of endeavor, he demonstrated a keenness of understanding, a perspicacity of vision that lay beyond the reach of ordinary minds. To the others of us, Rizal's greatness flows from the sheer courage with which he faced the firing squad at the Luneta some sixty years ago. He fell on that spot, now enshrined In the heart of the nation, without the slightest flinching of his faith or the weakening of his will ingness to die for a cause. Others, of lesser mettle and spiritual strength, would have promptly knuckled under In the face of certain doom, but Rizal stood calm and composed, sedate and serene down to the end. Then, again, to still others of us, Dr. Rizal's greatness stems from his deep love for his family and abiding loyalty to his friends. In this regard, he was profoundly human. While studying ab road, tender thoughts of family and friends back home constantly crowded into his waking moments, and these thoughts he poured forth in a stream of letters warm with love and affectionate counsel. Because of his family, because of his friends, because of his country(Continued on page 24) December, 1957 Page 15 A Letter to Santa Claus •• • (Continued from page 15) affection, in fear of being unloved in return tee shut our eyes our hearts hoping we’ll be spared the anguish of such a terrible pain, ice pretend because it is easier that way. we pretend because it is the only sane thing to do — it’s the only way to keep our heads (or so we think), we miss many miracles because we do not have enough courage to take a step beyond the arbitrary land marks of our souls, because we do not believe that the price of greatness is danger, there is the growing cult that tells us that the only way never to be hurt is not to let anything matter to us — “that much”, “cry, the beloved country for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear, let him not love the earth too deeply, let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers nor stand too silent to which makes red the veld with fire, let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley, for fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.” santa claus, you’ve stood for everything fine and good that we are not. you stand for generosity, for peace, for love, you are the central figure of a tradition that defies time’s flight, you are the symbol of a custom begun by the magi who followed a star, you are the relic of a beloved Christian way of life that no invention or discovery can vanquish. . . the little ones yet believe in you. the children whose hearts are not yet dead, you are the only one eternal in the grief of a changing world, from the remnants of a shattered childhood i have retained a memory of you. i do not have to ask you what is the answer to balance the gravity of such a pessimism, if you are not the answer then perhaps you and i had been playing a cosmic game of the living dead, you are real — more real than anything i’d ever been sure of. santa claus, i believe in you. THE GREATNESS OF . . . (Continued from, page 15) men, he had to come back home, even if it meant his arrest and ultimate death. All these — his genius, his courage that knew no faltering or fear, his de votion to family, his dedication to friends — are shining gems on the fame of Dr. Rizal's greatness. When we consider, however, his true significance in the light of history, when we reflect upon upon the whole of the stream of his life, his works and his struggles, we find that these gems, remarkable in themselves though they really are, are only so many little brilliances sparkling on the vast diadem of his real greatness. For, then, we realize the real stature and the true magnitude of his greatness. We realize that Dr. Rizal was not so much a man as an ideas, not so much a person as an institution of thought. We realize that such idea, such thought was so strong, so powerful, so universally appealing, that it has not only banished darkness from this land with its fiery flames of freedom, but that also it has served, even to this day, as constant beacon light and inspiration in the poli tical lives of people in other lands. As such Idea, as such institution of thought, he has hardly any peer In all the history of modern times. This Is the quintessence of Dr. Rizal's greatness. We remember, reverently, the story of "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." "And God said, 'Let there be light: and there was light.' " The Spirit of God, the Thought of God, moved and kept moving through the void and darkness of the beginning of things. At the end of the sizth day. the Thiught of God had created the world and all the things upon it. And light was born from the darkness and the moon and sun and stars hung in the firmament of the heavens; and the earth grew green with grass, abounding in flora and fauna, and the waters were heavy with "moving creatures that hath life." God, indeed, created the world by the force of His Thought. In a limited, but nonetheless in a very substantial and real sense, Dr. Jose Rizal "created" this country of ours by the force of his thought. It was a sad country that he was born into. It was a country that moaned and groaned under the heels of tyran ny and oppression. The Spaniards wield ed complete control and domination over its political and religious life; they were the masters, the supreme rulers whose word was law oil over the land. Their regime so sapped and subverted the will and assertiveness of the Filipinos that the latter in time ceased even to yearn for a better and happier future. The Filipinos had become abject slaves, paying bovine obedience to the caprices of the foreign conquerors, living merely for the present, hopeless and helpless. Theirs had become a cheerless world indeed, a world "without form and void", a world heovy with the clouds of dark ness and despair. But Rizal, the idea, the thought, moved into this darkness and this despair. His thought, his spirit, to borrow a biblical phrase, "moved upon the face" of his country, touching the minds of his country men, reaching their hearts, reproving them for their lethargy and indifference, awakening in them the sparks of legiti mate aspirations for the ultimate re demption of their land and its liberation from the clutches of colonialism. It ap preciated the fact that the "contact with the Spanish culture had consolidated the political and moral unity of the Fili pinos and had given them new religion, language, and customs"; but, at the same time, it echoed the conviction born out of bitter experience, "that the loss of liberty and human dignity was too great a price to pay for an incompetent gov ernment*' that the Spaniards had institu ted in the Country. The spirit of Rizal, the thought of Rizal, moved and kept moving through the dark void of his country, and wher ever it went, it left behind an indelible trail of light in the hearts of his people. After a lifetime of constant love and consistent labor, crowned by the glory of his supreme sacrifice at the Luneta, Rizal had "created" his country, so to speak, by the force of his thought, its trail of light multiplying into flaming multitudes of faith that burned torches for the freedom of the land we now know as the Republic of the Philippines. Throughout his life, Rizal had only one obsession — the attainment of liberty for his native land, and its establishment as a sovereign nation with a government truly independent of foreign control and the Filipino people governing themselves. He believed that God had intended the country for the Filipinos and that the best administrators of the Interests of the country and its inhabitants would be, the Filipinos themselves. Whatever he did, he did in the passion of this obsession; even his death he had foreseen as an imperative In the fulfillment of this con suming ambition. It was not that Rizal was selfish or that he championed the doctrine of schismatic regionalism, but he saw through the wisdom and logic of the proposition that a nation ought to be governed by the nationals themselves, (Continued on page 39) Page; 24 THE CAROLINIAN
Date: 1957
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