Tonight is New Year’s eve, and I am ready to greet it with fire in my blood. Greeting the New Year, for me, has always needed fire. It’s in my blood, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
No, I don’t mean fireworks or firecrackers. Been there, done that, although I still like to watch the sparkling colors of giant fire flowers and listen to the throbbing crescendo of explosions from afar. Neither do I mean alcoholic firewater. Been there, done that, too.
Rather, what I need to fuel the constant New Year’s fire in the blood is at least a decent, family-sized bonfire. Yes, bonfires. The bigger, the better.
In the past and in various cities where I’ve spent yearend holidays, including Metro Manila and Baguio (the two cities our family is most attached to), I’ve witnessed spectacular displays of fireworks and the most awesome din of firecrackers to greet the New Year. Honestly, I always look forward to the fireworks even if I’ve already written about the need to junk this addiction. (“Firecrackers: A self-destructive Pinoy addiction?”) But today I won’t talk about fireworks.
Instead, I will talk about bonfires and warm memories. From childhood onwards, I’ve always associated New Year’s Eve with bonfires. Great bonfires, small bonfires, tiny flickers in peasant hearths. Village bonfires that slowly burned thick sections of palayon (native oak) and pine logs throughout the night until dawn. Smelly bonfires from old rubber tires and steel drums containing rags soaked in used oil, burning in the middle of the streets of the sprawling metropolis, smudging clothes and floors, faces and even nostrils, with black soot. Workers’ bonfires of scrap wood in construction sites, flaring up for a few minutes just enough to greet 12 midnight.
Nevertheless, nothing beats the primal urge to sit down around a community bonfire, to feast and drink, to leap and dance, to sing songs and tell stories throughout the passing of the Old and the dawning of the New. No child should ever lack the experience of enjoying the brilliant tongues of flame that leap with sparks into the night, the crackling wood that curled into a glowing red mass, the luscious scent of fish and meat roasting on spits, and the warm radiance that pulls an entire community of people in to huddle cozily against the cold.
There’s just the three of us here, this time.
But today, like in past New Year’s Eves, I’m toting some bundles of timber flitches and scrap lumber and getting an impromptu stone fireplace ready, where we can sit around the fire in jackets and bonnets, and nibble on assorted goodies grilled over the hot coals. We will take a sip or two from the bottle of wine we’ve saved for the occasion. And maybe I’ll share other New Year bonfire stories.
We will share with each other the thoughts that run through our heads in the passing of the years, knowing that the Great River of Time sweeps relentlessly this day through the countries, cities, villages and farms of the world, one after the other, generating glowing streams and sparks of fire, great and small, to mark the turning of pages in our lives.
The most disparate peoples will be united by that thought. And among these vast multitudes will be other loved ones, other missed ones, marking the New Year too in their own way and place and time, sharing the same thoughts. Cell sites be downed for all I care, but we’ll all greet the New Year with fire in our blood and hope in our eyes.
And as the bonfire dies down, the three of us will sleepily gaze at the dying embers, keep the fire within us to warm the blood, hug each other, and send New Year’s greetings to the rest of our ancestral brothers and sisters, bound by more than filial ties but comradeship in blood, sweat and tears, though they be a distant thousands of kilometers away. #Follow @junverzola