By: Telly Gonzaga-Ocampo
We and the The Little Match Girl in a Cold Christmas Without Snow
The BER months have begun and September has come and gone, yet I have not heard the music of Jose Mari Chan. In years past, his voice would already be filling malls and jeepneys, kitchens and terminals — a gentle reminder that Christmas is near. This year, the air is different. It is heavy, confusing, disturbing. The carols seem hesitant to play, as if they too are unsure if there is something to sing about.
And in that silence, I remembered a story I used to read to my children on Christmas Eves long ago: The Little Match Girl.
She was an orphan. On a bitter Christmas Eve, she walked alone in the snow, barefoot, with nothing but a thin, scanty shawl to keep her warm and a single box of matches to sell. No one bought. No one looked. She peeked through a frosted window and saw a family inside — a table overflowing with food, a fireplace roaring, children laughing in the warm glow.
Outside, she had only the tiny flame of a matchstick to warm her frozen fingers. One match, then another. Each flame gave her a beautiful vision — of warmth, of food, of love, of a grandmother who once cared for her. And when the last flame died, so did she. She died freezing on Christmas Eve, while the world celebrated just beyond her window.
It is a story from a cold country, far from ours. We do not have snow. We do not have winter. But we have our own kind of “cold”.
Today, it is not just one little match girl who dies in the cold. In the Philippines, many die — not from snow, but from drowning; from bridges that collapse under our feet; from flood control projects that were supposed to protect us, but instead became channels of corruption that swallowed homes and dreams; from landslides that bury entire small communities in the dark, silent and forgotten, like so many man-made calamities we have learned to call natural.
We are slowly dying, too, but of a different hunger. What with the price of rice and basic food soaring beyond reach. Where can we find rice at twenty pesos per kilo? Where are the Kadiwa stores we were promised? The small flame of hope that ordinary families hold — that tomorrow there will be something to put on the table — is flickering. For many, it has already gone out.
And yet, amidst this crisis we are in, the powers that be have not changed their lifestyle. They still cruise our streets in their fuel-guzzling SUVs, windows tinted, passing us by, as if we are invisible. They are still there — in malls, in high-end cafes and resorts and hotels, playing pickleball, the new craze, even as the country churns in political turmoil.
On the side, we ask quietly: How much is the day-to-day cost of the impeachment? Millions? Billions? Will the result of this political theater give us a better and more prosperous Philippines? Will it lower the price of rice? Will it fix the flood? Will it bring back the lives buried under mud?
Where do we go from here?
The little match girl looked at her last matchstick and saw heaven. What do we see when we look at our last hope? Will we still find glittering lights this Christmas? Or will we find ourselves, like her, peering through someone else’s window — watching a feast we cannot taste, feeling a warmth we cannot have, holding only a single, trembling flame against the cold night of our own country?
Christmas is coming. But we are still “freezing”.
