Why do Filipinos love to sing “Jingle Bells”?
This piece is six decades late. Ironically, it is inspired by news that several Philippine lawmakers including Justices of the Supreme Court and bureaucrats linked to Senator Leila De Lima’s arrest and imprisonment will have their US visas cancelled or these persons be banned in traveling to the US.
This stems from US President Donald Trump’s approval of the Department of State Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill 2020 where a subsection included sanctions of those involved in the imprisonment of the Philippine senator, also known as the Global [Sergei] Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
Is the Philippines still being regarded a colony by this self-appointed Policeman of the World? This ex-colonizer whose war crimes, especially in Mindanao, have not been openly discussed by many Filipinos who are just as colonial-minded, by politicians whose interests are for America’s own and who, it seems, want to get validation for their political actions from this former colonizer.
Which brings me now to one situation that had an impact on me as a child and my remembering it today once more and each time the Christmas season starts.
Often, I weigh things to see if some Americans love us, hate us, or are simply ignorant about us or, it’s neither here nor there in their thinking of the Philippines because as a country we’re not significant to them, and most do not even know where in the world our country is at.
I was then in grade school and part of a Catechism class composed of children of members of the Christian Family Movement. We were surprised to have American and European visitors who
wanted to observe us learning about religious ritual, bible stories and prayers.
You guessed right. It was the Christmas season.
As kids we had little of the inhibitions of adults and we were made to sing for the visiting gods. Pronto, we belted out ‘Jingle Bells’. While singing, I noticed the smirk of this American, his eyes boring unto ours.
After the song, we dutifully bowed to the applause. This visitor then rose to thank us but asked, ‘so where’s the snow’?
As young as that, I caught the sarcasm and simply stared at the man. Golly, I didn’t have the words nor the facts to say what I wanted to say to him then. Unfortunately, when this piece sees the light, he may already be in kingdom come!
Well, thinking over what happened each time I would hear this song “Jingle Bells” and this “one-horse, one sleigh dashing through the snow” image in my mind, I thought about us Filipinos in love with a song that has a remarkable lilt, with simple and memorable lyrics celebrating the joys of a season.
Filipinos love music and that had made me scream in my day dreams that that was why we picked ‘Jingle Bells’ to sing to please them visiting gods. We simply thought a joyful song, regardless of setting, has that appeal across peoples and races.
The song ‘Jingle Bells’ is sung in G major. It was composed by James Lord Pierpont and published during the autumn of 1857 under the album “One-Horse Open Sleigh” to celebrate Thanksgiving for the One-Horse, One Sleigh races and not, repeat, not to celebrate the Yuletide.
Another important fact is that the sleigh bells served a practical purpose: to warn pedestrians of the approach of the one-horse, one sleigh which has no brakes unlike that of a car. Somewhere it also says that the jingling sleigh bells attract the reindeers, make them stay put or make them stay in line.
I thank the stars for making me encode away what I had wanted to say as a child then.
This song “Jingle Bells” belongs to all humanity now and it has more meaning to me than any Christmas song despite the fact that I haven’t seen nor touched snow.
And, you ask who cares about that? Nobody. Really.
Merry Christmas!
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