Only in the Philippines: At 5 a.m. last Thursday, Sept. 1, we woke up early to finish writing a script—and we were greeted by the warm, toasty strains of a Christmas carol emanating from our TV screen, courtesy of an early-early morning show on the tube! Truly, if Sept. 1 is here, can Christmas be far behind?
The unusual sight and sound may have puzzled foreigners who happened to have tuned in, but we Pinoys have learned to take the unique phenomenon in stride.
In Christmas-crazy Philippines, the start of the “ber” months, comprising the final quarter of the year, marks the beginning of the four-month build-up leading to the official Christmas season that annually celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ.
Fixation
Precisely because that “reason for the season” has been blurred and upstaged by the four-month hoopla preceding it, some people have criticized our inordinate and way too premature fixation on and obsession with Christmas. It’s become a canny commercial gambit, they say, to get us to buy presents, have jolly dinners out, and spend, spend, spend!
Well, the TV show we watched certainly didn’t do anything to dissuade viewers from getting zapped by the “Christmas spirit,” four months before the actual event. Why, the hosts even had a little ceremony to switch on the lights on the Christmas tree on the show’s set!
So, how come we aren’t boggled, or even surprised? For one thing, this is the land where, up to a decade ago, we even had the Paskuhan Village in Pampanga, where it was Christmas every day of the year! It was supposed to have been set up mainly for the tourist trade—but, the times we were there, we saw more locals than foreigners having the time of their lives buying souvenirs, like toy Santas making a soft landing via parachutes (!).
So, like it or lump it, have a (very early) Merry Christmas, everyone!
More Grinch than Santa
On the less ho-ho-ho side of the “pre-Christmas” show we caught, we were boggled to see that the program had no less than 10 (count ‘em) cohosts! Obviously believing in safety in numbers, the program lined up its cohosts shoulder-to-shoulder as they each delivered their scripted opening spiels—and there were so many hosts on-cam that the camera had to zoom way out to get them all in one frame!
How did we know the spiels were scripted? Because many of the multifarious hosts didn’t know how to read their cue cards or “idiot boards” in a natural way. They simply shouted out the words written for them by unseen scripting serfs, and added nothing of their own to the (lack of) enterprise.
Why, one or two of them even “buckled” and couldn’t read their scripted spiels properly. Instead of hiding their heads in abject shame, however, they laughed and laughed. Oh, what fun to make mistakes and get paid for it! (Sad to say, viewers didn’t share their slap-happy jollity.)
This is what happens when TV shows opt for quantity over quality. It sounds incredible to recall it now, but there used to be a time when a local morning show on TV was hosted by just two really talented and with-it people, Joey Lardizabal and Marilou Pardo—and they hosted their show better than all 10 of the cohosts we saw combined.
Sorry for sounding more like the grouchy Grinch than Santa on this tinkly, jingly “pre-Christmas” morning, but there it is . . .