Black Christmas

Bouncing back from flu two days before Christmas day means trying to resuscitate your taste buds at the moment a great buffet is to be served before you. Among other things, the virus breaks down your natural capability to savor the tastes in food and makes even the most delicious dish taste bitter. No matter how your mind urges you to gobble up foods, your taste buds invariably reject them.

Apart from losing my taste buds, I did not totally miss the funfare this Christmas. Thanks to Facebook which give me glimpses of the parties I missed, I was not totally shut out of circulation. Viewing and ‘liking’ the posted videos and photos, it was as if I were there.

A virus carrier had to voluntarily isolate himself. You should not get back in the groove right away after a bout with flu lest you give the virus away to many like a parting gift. Flu attacks every part of your being and the body pain extends up to the strands of your hair. To me, it is one of the most uncomfortable common illness that you do not want to infect friends with.

There’s a good side in everything even in getting sick during the holidays. For one thing, I was spared from the shopping rush and the terrible traffic that clog the streets during the holidays. Again, the alternate routes were redrawn and renamed Christmas lanes as if the traffic problem is the fault of Christmas. When a solution had been tried without success several times, most probably it would not work next time especially if the approach is just like repackaging the old ‘solutions’ with Christmas wrappers.

Things that cross my mind while on sick bay: what should be the right color of Christmas? We sing ‘white’ Christmas but there’s nothing really ‘white’ with Christmas in the Philippines. ‘Green’ is appropriate if Christmas means the go signal to race to the malls when the shopping frenzy starts. In fact, for most people, it’s a ‘red’ Christmas because it puts them in the negative money-wise buying gifts for everyone. This brings us to the point that the right color of Christmas should be ‘black’, bankbook with positive balance, which means not overspending on gifts, food, parties, entertainment, etc.