12 Days of Christmas: Day 4 - Christmas Day

For the second year now, my father's brother and his wife, Tito Nonoy and Tita Liz, decided to come over for Christmas lunch. Last year, they attended mass in St. Andrew and spent the entire afternoon with us, watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose (They probably enjoyed that, and came back for more). This year, they decided to hear mass in Makati again.

So, despite a late and busy Christmas eve night -- last-minute grocery shopping in Shopwise, mass in St. Andrew at 8pm, Christmas dinner and noche buena and gift opening -- I had to wake up at 10 to prepare my pasta. Again, in keeping with the trend of the season (thriftiness), the pasta was nothing fancy. Just good ol' Italian sauce and corned beef hash sauteed in olive oil, plus Tita Yorn's leftover olives, capers and cream, which we had to get because they will be away from the condo until Jan. 19.

Mama prepared shredded carrots, apples and orange pulp for salad.

We also had fried chicken....


...the usual Christmas ham...

...and pork adobo brought by Tita Liz.


We had ice cream and Becky's Kitchen walnut brownies for dessert. And finally, the wines were out. This year, my relatives decided to tackle a different kind of horror -- that of getting drunk. Although Tito Nonoy is a very responsible driver and never gets more than his adequate fill of alcoholic drinks before a trip, Tita Liz, we found out, is wont to fall for seemingly innocent drinking sprees.

While sipping on Carlo Rossi, Tito Nonoy related how he had to fetch Tita one time from a neighbor's house when she couldn't come home on her own. She was invited by female friends to have dinner and some drinks. She accepted the invitation, not knowing that two among the group are expert drinkers who were planning on a different game that night. All the dinner guests were women. They locked themselves in and began a "tagay" that lasted until midnight. Husbands, boyfriends and other male family members were not allowed to join, to ensure that the ladies would go bottoms-up on their drinks without help from the males.

Tito said he practically half-dragged, half-carried my tita home. And when they arrived, Tita Liz cried non-stop -- whether out of drunkennes or out of frustration that she didn't see through their scheme. She was quite inexperienced in this as she rarely drinks, and that served as a lesson. Until now.

She told my brother: "Natatakpan mo yata ang electric fan. Urong ka kaunti." We noticed that Tita was perspiring. A few minutes later, she said, "Parang ang init yata ngayon." She was still perspiring; the fan was directly in front of her. Then, we noticed that Mama was also perspiring and kept wiping her neck. "Oo nga, parang ang init," Mama said.

"Hindi kaya yung iniinom niyo?" asked Papa.
"Bakit, ano ba iniinom niyo?" Tita Liz asked.
"Ito!" pointing at the Carlo Rossi red wine. "Ano ba kasi yang iniinom niyo!"
She stared at the bottle in front of her. It was not the Carlo Rossi. It was a white colored wine whose name I didn't catch, but after careful scrutiny, it had 17.5% alcohol, higher than the red wine we were drinking. And only she and Mama consumed the whole bottle! Later, they had one fan each blowing in their wet red faces.

This year's surprise was Justine, my cousin Joel's 14-year-old daughter, whom I have not seen in years. The last time I remember seeing her was when Marthe was still of crib age and Justine was looking over the crib to play with Marthe. That was most certainly a long, long time ago. So I was really taken aback when a tall, quite fashionable young lady walked in. She's now taller than me, of course (everyone seems to be!) She seldom joins her lolo and lola at Christmas as she stays with her other grandparents most of the time, but this year, she was able to come. How time flies!

Soon, Tito Nonoy, Tita Liz and Justine said goodbye. Gifts were exchanged, and another Christmas day has gone by.