Christmas shopping and celebrating Filipiniana

My father passed away in 2013; and after he became a widower in 1996, there was a point in his life when he would frequent the annual Christmas bazaars that would be part of the event landscape from August to December.

- PHILIP CU UNJIENG

IN SUPPORT OF THE DHB, (L-R) Ayala Foundation's Paul Vincent Mercado, Ayala Malls' Jorelle Balitbit, Bea Zobel Jr., Sofia Zobel-Elizalde, Globe's Roche Vandenberghe, and GCash's Neil Trinidad.

The funny part was that he didn’t like crowds and queues, and so he’d show up some 30-40 minutes before the bazaars would officially open, and insist on buying and paying, and leaving. The joke that friends who had stalls would text me was that he was their “Bueno Mano;” and that they’d have to attend to him in the midst of setting up. As they said, “Sayang din the sale.” And he would repeat this routine over those months that the bazaars would sprout up — I surmise it was therapy for him, and it was getting his Christmas shopping done early.

I mention this in passing, as Bea Zobel Jr. and Sofia Zobel Elizalde are the co-founders of the Designers Holiday Bazaar, which is now on it’s 13th year; and I’m sure if my Dad were still around, he would have loved to show up at the DHB, make “kwento” with the two, and leave before the bazaar opens. How the girls and the DHB stall-owners would welcome his premature arrival, I can only guess. As I know these bazaars are run more formally now, and with stricter ingress stipulations — in his days, they were held in covered basketball courts or converted open fields, and he would just wander in and start buying.