A common scene during Christmas season in UPLB is the installation of a Filipino representation of the nativity more famously known as Belen. It appears as a still theatre complete with all the characters the Bible narrates. Added to the facade (just this year) was the big Christmas tree. Not the typical green, plastic giant Christmas tree that we know. The tree was actually made of bamboo twigs tied together in a tall steel framework. At first glance, it appears more of a haystack rather than a Christmas tree, but now that it is surrounded with biiiig (when I say big,they're really big) colorful boxes of gifts scaled up to match the hugeness of the tree.
What's unique about Belen is that it has become a Filipino icon same with the parol (originally farol) and made Christmas a little bit more complete with its presence. The materials (usually indigent such as wood and twigs) makes it even more Filipino. The figures of the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph together with the magi, shepherds and the animals such as donkeys and cows are all carved (and I'm guessing they're from Paete here in Laguna) from hardwood. A process that takes a craftsman or a professional carver or sculptor to finish. The images were carved into perfection. A perfect representation of the Western, stern looking images 9so dull and so lifeless with their brown varnish.
i can't blame everyone who take a minute of their time to visit the installation and snatch a phone camera or a digicam out of their pockets to capture the lifeless images beside their perfectly smiling faces, overshadowing the images and reducing them into mere wood. I too have had some pictures with the scene as a background and it's amazing how, in the midst of modernity and continued capitalism, Filipinos, even the young ones still enjoy the the labor and craft of our craftsman and take time viewing and enjoying the scene in the middle of a concrete pavement and towering concrete buildings that has become the student's infrastructure ever since they came in to UP Los banos.
What is rather amusing about the installation is the fact that nothing of its images seem to look like us. The infant Jesus is a complete foreign looking baby with its limbs reached up anybody who wish to touch it. The Mary I know in the Catholic tradition of grandiose tradition of procession looks more Western than ever. The angel hanged up in the kubo is a cherubim which I usually see in souvenir shops either made of glass or breakable ceramic materials. Except for their borwn-ness, one can instantly say that the figures are all but Western, nothing seems to make them Filipino at all.
That's why, even if at the very start of the construction I did not like the idea of a brown tree, I liked the tree more than the belen. The towering representation of a Western symbol became Filipino and speak of Filipinoness. It reminded me of haystacks in Amorsolo paintings that has become the sign of harvest and good produce. It has become the center of every barrio fiesta and celebration thanking God for the harvest and livelihood for the year.
Semiotics speaks to us of how things mean in a given context. semiotics tells us that an image can explain the rationality behind an aesthetic which assumes a cultural value. The tradition of belen making, carving and Filipino craftsmanship, bring forth by the Christmas season should be mindful of the cultural scene and roots they wish to represent. amidst the modern lights and the color of Christmas emanates the real classic that Filipino craft is and will be.
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