(I wrote this piece in 1982 when I was still a student at the College of Business Administration of the University of the Philippines in Diliman. It appeared on the front page of the December 1982 issue of the Guilder Newsletter. I no longer really "celebrate" Christmas, but I'm putting it here as an offering this Christmas season to whoever may be reading. - Jose Luis Tolentino)
We can just imagine how it must have been at the start, when such a real silent night took place, when all the lights we know of now took the form of a single bright light leading the magi to the Child.
Christmas nights, as we know them now, are anything but silent. Even when the songs and laughter of expectant children take respite, the lingering traces of their tones escort a mind of sleep. Christmas lights burn and chant till dawn, and for consecutive nights, a choir of churches manages well to sing. Young people dream of dates; some worry over funds. While the rest of the family sleep, a child wishes for those presents lying by a tall and jolly tree, each night for him setting with the toll of a kind, imaginary bell bringing time closer to the day. A lonely man as these occur, watches from his window—ponders; for a while, he smiles.
Christmas nights are never silent. Often, the faces of the people speak; worries and disappointments come out, hope and anticipation accompany the smiles of others. Around campus, the mood is strong. The cloudy Christmas sky, almost distinct to the season, hails an oft-claimed joy, proclaims the much-said goodwill to man. Gifts are passed, nights are planned. Expectancy of better things relieves the solitary man, and almost everything is carried out with a Christmas theme.
We never think of Christmas nights as silent, yet the song remains perhaps the most popular and durable of the season. Christmas nights, in fact, come as the busiest in the year for most of us; we greet friends we hardly know, relatives who, for the most part of the year, remain as strangers. We do feel it, don’t we? It is a mood that we ourselves bring toward the end of a year; for some, it becomes a reflective, depressing season, and yet we want it; it is tradition; Christmas has been with us since childhood.
Christmas nights were perhaps better when we were kids, and for some of us, the dread of actually encountering a real “silent night” during a future season, is not so distant. It would be fortunate if all of us were to spend the rest of our days experiencing Christmas nights filled with the joy and the air of brotherhood.
Yet we need not worry about silent nights in Christmas. Even in the worst of times, Christmas comes, and it comes with its sounds, its lights, though less intense, but always, the voice of Christmas reaches us and sings.
Christmas nights are anything but silent. It is only when the last light of Christmas passes out, when the final traces of a Christmas song are sung, that the silent nights suddenly arrive.
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