MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
It’s official. DTI tells one and all, start buying your noche buena goodies and ingredients now, today, before prices spring up in the last quarter leading to December.
The advice – granting that it will be heeded by and affordable to millions of those most impacted by inflation, unemployment, innate unemployability – has just unofficially further lengthened our already longest-Christmas-in-the-world reputation by five days.
Pre-pandemic, pre-2022 inflation, Christmas in the Philippines began on Sept. 1, the first day of the “ber” months. With DTI’s altruistic call to arms against prices last Thursday, Aug. 25, we now have five more days to stretch the Christmas spirit, at least the Christmas shopping spirit. What can we buy that won’t spoil before mid-December, when most of us should be wrapping our gifts for the not-so-naughty and the very-nice?
Food writers and lifestyle editors could point us in the right direction – queso de bola comes to mind immediately, as do canned goods (read the label for expiration dates!) – but here are a few gifts for the home, because charity begins at home, even and especially at Christmas:
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Salt shakers – whether there is or isn’t a salt shortage;
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Crystal (but not plastic) sugar bowls, a classy way to show the gift-ed that you’re above it all, that is, the
sugar shortage-sugar hoarding magician’s act, now you see it, now you see it differently; and
3. Rice bin, a present that will stretch into the future, i.e., the dawning of the Year of the Rabbit, for according to feng shui prosperity thinking, we should fill our rice bins to the brim on the eve of the new year.
There’s a knot in my stomach as I sit here counting the numbers on the calendar. We have, beginning on Thursday, Sept. 1, exactly 115 days before Christmas Eve. It’s a long way to dodging spiraling prices, what with the cold winter months spiking the world’s demand for fuel for heating and brighter lights to drive away some of the darkness.
With shortages and higher prices breathing down our stiff necks – fuel, onions, seafood, rice, cold cash – the worst part of the equation is that our 10-year-olds are short on reading comprehension and our babies are being born shorter and smaller.