Herbie Gomez WHILE driving for work days before New Year’s Day, I was listening to my wife Marites and our neighbor as they laughed about their superstition. You see, they’d go to the market together almost every year-end to buy 12 different round fruits to complete the impending lavish gastronomic journey we call Media Noche. Most of the time, these fruits would remain untouched not because they’re not supposed to be eaten but because there’s just too much food on the table during the midnight feast that are humanly impossible to ingest in one sitting. The fruits have to be round because some guy, presumably old and supposedly wise who lived a long time ago, convinced himself and the people around him that round was the symbol of prosperity. He “required” a dozen fruits because each fruit symbolizes the 12 months. But what if the Gregorian calendar isn’t the de facto international standard? What if the human race suddenly invented a 24-month calendar with 15- to 16-day months, and then agreed to make it the new universally accepted standard? Then you’d have to increase the number of round fruits on the table from 12 to 24. “The businessmen are just taking us for a ride,” Marites, laughing, told our friend at the backseat, pointing out the commercialization of superstition. Our neighbor agreed, and she laughed, too. I’m sure my wife isn’t really convinced that the things she does to greet the new year would have any effect on our lives. These are mere practices she acquired before she reached the age of reason, passed on to her family by her ancestors. But, hey, these old New Year’s Eve/Day habits are harmless! Most of the year, my wife is not superstitious--except during the Christmas and New Year celebrations when she does all sorts of strange but harmless things in the house. I see coins scattered everywhere and, somehow, I get it. Maybe this year, I would ask her to explain the glasses of water and sugar on the table which I really don’t get, and which I never bothered to ask her about. What I know is that a former neighbor in downtown Cagayan de Oro taught her this water-and-sugar “ritual.” Here are other irrational notions and/or practices that we, Filipinos, have as a result of our reverence for supernatural beings that, most likely, are non-existent:
  • Greet the new year with much noise to drive bad spirits away. First, there’s no evidence of bad spirits. None at all. This annual fixation for noise is why people lose their fingers each year due to firecracker accidents.
  • All lights in the house should be turned on so the year ahead would be bright. And you’re surprised why your December electric bills shot up?
  • All doors, windows, drawers, and cabinets should be opened to let good fortune in. Wouldn’t that apply to bad fortune, too? And wouldn’t that be an open invitation to burglary?
  • Pay all debts off because one’s financial state at the stroke of midnight will be the same during the entire year. That doesn’t seem to apply to many of the biggest businessmen in the city who practically live on fortune and debts at the same time.
  • Wallets should be filled with money. That’s a good idea because it’s going to be pay time this month.
  • Clean everything on New Year’s Eve, and then don’t clean anything on New Year’s Day so as not to sweep the good fortune away. So why not use the vacuum cleaner on New Year’s Eve instead so as to suck in all that fortune-causing energy, and then don’t clean up from January to November so that everything that was siphoned into the house on New Year’s Eve stays?
  • Wear something with polka dots because round means prosperity. Yeah, right, and look like a Dalmatian.
  • Make kids jump 12 times at the stroke of midnight so as to make them grow taller. I swear there’s a midget out there who’s done this when he was a kid. Surprise, surprise, he’s still a midget! Pastilan.