Ode to Labor Day

 

                                                                                                                        Photo: BZL

WORK ‘TIL you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Work. Underpaid? Bereft of benefits? No job security? Work. Be thankful to be working. Work harder.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Give quality time – not to the growing children, but all to work. Keep bills paid. Years pass. Chances pass. Lucky, work you have. Be glad. Thank God.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Get older. Get scared to work less hard. Work harder. Prove you still can.

No time for neighbors, community, friends, or the laziness of leisure. No riches. No home left.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

No savings. No pension. All spent staying barely healthy enough to work harder.

Holidays a time for silent desperation. Of work deprivation. Why stop?

Work. Don’t stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Or maybe go to sales at the stores where workers are working ‘till they drop, reminders of just another working day. Don’t be sorry for them. They work. You don’t. Envy them.

No job here. Work somewhere – sweat to your last drop in Saudi, Dubai, Bahrain, even in war-torn Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Work in any way – nanny in Singapore, caregiver in Israel, nurse in London, factory worker in Incheon, domestic helper in Hong Kong, duped to be drug mule to Indonesia. Do anything. Stay alive. Keep the family back home alive.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Rich people and bosses have no guilt about holidays, no fear in a nap.

Workers have no need for holidays, all fear in a wink.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up, get up, get up, get up. Do it again.

Pay your taxes. Pay your bills. Pay their taxes. Pay their bills. You’ve lost everything that you valued anyway. Loser. Loner. Lazy. That’s how the power class sees us all. We are tools of their greed, and the fools who lost all dreams. They are far, far smarter than we. Whoopee.

Labor Day?

Why are you not working? No job? Lost it? A day off? Why are you not working? At least, with the little left in your pockets – if any – go buy something that will swell the profits and power of those who find us all so pliable, so pitiful, so useable, so exploitable, so workable. Listen for the call. It may be the need for profits calling. If so, get up. Now.

Work ‘till you drop. Stop. Drop. Get up. Do it again.

Then stop. When you finally expire – literally and figuratively. Unless the wealthy and the powerful figure out a way to prolong our lives a little longer to make a few more pesos as they inject us with pain killers and tranquilizers so we cannot even scream on the way out of their profit-making schemes. Physically, emotionally all spent. No savings. No pensions. No hope.

Labor Day?

That’s all day, every day, in every way.

The Philippines is a country of holidays – special, national, local, working and non-working. But certainly not for workers or those who wish they were. We labor for the wealthy and the powerful to have their holidays, every day.

Our labor. Their day. Aye, we are their holidays.

(By Donna Smith, executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation. Published on September 05, 2011 by Common Dreams.org. With minimal alterations/additions by this columnist to fit into Philippine setting. First published here on May 6, 2015)  

 

SABUAGA FESTIVAL: Holy Week closes on a joyous high

STO. TOMAS, Pampanga – Birthed in 2009, the Sabuaga Festival has since become the capping event of the Holy Week observance here, coming as it is after the blasting of Judas at noontime.  

“Sabuaga” is a portmanteau of the Kapampangan sabuag (scatter) and sampaga (flowers) – after the sagalas’ showering of petals on the image of the Virgin Mary in “veneration of her keeping the faith and oneness with her Son in His sufferings, thus her rewards in His joyful resurrection” at the earlier Easter Sunday procession. 

Hence, petals and confetti literally rains on the processional route around Poblacion, usually starting at 2 p.m. of Easter Sunday as revelers join groups coming from the town’s seven barangays  in street dancing. (This year’s though started at almost 5 p.m. due to the heat, and ended past 7 p.m.) 

 

At the town plaza where the revelry culminates, the groups in their most exotic costumes reflective of the product of the barangays they represent – pottery for Sto. Nino, caskets for San Vicente, fish for Poblacion, garments for Moras de la Paz, tinsmith for San Matias… -- or images of their patron saints will each do its own interpretative dance presentation, on the theme sabuag sampaga, naturally. Judges coming from the arts, culture and tourism sector will proclaim the winners. 

Likewise, the Sabuaga Festival has since served as a fitting climax to the Holy Week celebration in the whole province. Indeed, the Maleldo in the City of San Fernando highlighted by the actual crucifixion rites in Barangay Cutud on Good Friday finds culmination in the joy of Easter Sunday’s Sabuaga in Sto. Tomas, which for the longest time was but a barrio of the capital town until its weaning in 1952.  

Ending Holy Week with a big bang

 

IN FIERY red pants and long-sleeved high-collared shirt a la Elvis taking over the flowing robe of his time. Short cropped hair a la early Beatles, and sideburns straight from King FPJ himself. Mick Jagger tongue, yeah that same one hanging from wide open puffed lips that has become the trademark of the now-geriatric-but-still-rocking Rolling Stones.

There is nothing biblical in the countenance and appearance of the Judas on-a-perch at the center of the courtyard of the St. Thomas the Apostle parish church in barrio Poblacion of the eponymously named town. He looked more like a puppet from some Punch-and-Judy show. But the throng, nay, the horde of faithful do not mind at all.
That was the Judas the elders have seen since their youth. The Judas now passed to their sons and grandsons, and to be passed on to their own progenies.

Easter Sunday noon has always been the designated time for the Judas show. But the concelebrated Mass traditionally officiated by the archbishop almost always takes a little too long with all those post-communion remarks of the pastoral council president and the awarding of some certificates of appreciation to the comite de festejos, Easter being the fiesta too.

The tensed uneasiness turns to collective relief, and explosions of joy, at the pealing of the church bells, the music from the band, and the explosion of kuwitis that signal the end of the Mass. 

Some more minutes of waiting had to be endured as the patio gets cleared of the parked vehicles. Then some firecrackers woven in large sipa ball-like contraption are let loose around the platform holding Judas’ perch to clear it of people. To establish a sort of a safety zone. 

Then, the show starts. 

Four papier-mache pyrotechnic black ravens from four corners of the platform “peck” at Judas’ feet igniting them and propelling Judas to make dizzying twists clockwise and counterclockwise, then turns upside down, round and round, the tongue sticking in and out. 

Then the explosions begin with the feet, the legs, the hand and arms – the head last, and loudest. Judas gets blasted to smithereens. In all of 15 minutes. 

A murmur of disappointment. Judas did fewer twists and turns. His tongue did not stick out that long. And the head exploded too soon and not too loud, as the crowd desired.

In years long past, this would have borne an ill omen. The loudness of the bang ending Judas then deemed a sign of the volume of the year’s harvest in the then-farming town: the louder the bang, the higher the yield. 

In 2012, instead of Judas, what exploded on Easter Sunday noon was a globe. No, it was not meant to signify the end of the world, not to presage any interpretation of the Mayan calendar that purportedly pointed to that year as the end for humankind. 

What was blasted away, symbolically, were the worldly sins – Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride – that keep mankind away from God. It was some sort of raising the event from pure vengeful glee to a higher level of spirituality. 

Whatever, the loss of Judas at the scaffold unsettled, utterly disappointed the loyal crowd who, year-in and year-out, come from near and far – even from overseas – just to be part of the annual spectacle.

With Judas back for blasting since, all has been well again here. 

SO, THE tradition continues this Easter Sunday of 2026. With the currency of the times impacting a political perspective on the Judas character – the Filipino politician who betrayed the nation for billions in flood control contracts.