The day before Christmas, we received this heartwarming text message at home:
“Dear Santa, I don’t want much for Christmas. I just want you to take good care of my favorite cousins and family. Keep them safe and healthy at all times … be their guardian angel and watch over them, wherever they go and whatever they do … grant whatever their hearts desire that will be good for them, and lastly, sprinkle blessings of love, peace, joy and happiness they truly deserve! Merry Christmas.”
That came from our dear cousin, lawyer Gary Mendoza, perennial favorite son of Lipa City.
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Maybe nobody plays Santa the way ’Insan Gary does.
But in keeping with the spirit of the season, may we ask for the same prayer to Santa for our dear, overworked President Noynoy Aquino, and also for national boxing idol Manny Pacquiao?
“…grant them whatever their hearts desire that will be good for them.”
For the President, who had been forced into a three-day leave due to coughing and colds, “may he regain all the strength he will always be needing in his thankless job; and all the fortitude he could muster to surmount the myriad problems and challenges confronting our country.”
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“….be their guardian angel and watch over them wherever they go and whatever they do.”
Pacquiao, national treasure and eight-division world champion, definitely needs solace to wade past the turbulent tax troubles which, based on official documents, he had also caused to mount. May Santa please guide him back to the just and right path in this damning bout.
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That said, let me report that Pacquiao, also known as a Santa for all seasons to his poor constituents, himself played Santa Claus some three years ago for a group of poor farm kids in Barangay Pangao, Lipa City. He contributed cash that helped us buy goodies for the program that was started over a decade ago by the late three-time Olympian Narciso Bernardo, trader Lucio “Luchi” Yan, civic leader Nandy Charvet of Mandaluyong, my kumpadres Mar Maralit and Gerry Mayor, outstanding church and civic workers in Lipa.
We will proceed with the annual gift-giving on Saturday, Dec. 28, and will also say another prayer for Pacquiao in the mid-afternoon rite at a tree-lined farm house in Purok 4, Pangao.
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Leading this year’s contributors is sportsman Ricky Vargas, president of the Alliance of Boxing Associations of the Philippines (Abap), whose team that landed a total of three gold medals was among the top national squads in the last Southeast Asian Games in Myanmar.
This year, with the absence of his old partner Pete Tanyao, Romulo “Boy Puti” Sebreros, a native of Tolosa, Leyte, and top vegetable trader in the Mandaluyong City market, has offered to provide the bulk of balled ham, which will go into a bag together with canned goods, rice, noodles, candies, assorted goodies from sportsmen Bambi Rivilla, Barts Mayo, and other anonymous donors.
Rene del Monte, formerly of Cupang, will supervise, with the assistance of Mar Maralit, the father-and-son tandem of Ruel and Gio Reyes, who will motor in from their farm in San Pablo bearing their invaluable gifts.
Thank you Dear Jesus, thank you Santa for this chance to bring some holiday joy to others.