
by Connie C. Triggiano
We were three friends, with three Christmas trees together, on three Advent weekends, along with three sets of Christmas ornaments and three different arrays of native snacks and drinks that sealed a friendship in balmy-weathered San Francisco in the early 1980s.
It began in our Humanities class during a special winter semester that included Sunday classes at University of San Francisco. On that first Advent Sunday, we found our class of irregular students ready to tackle Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene and defend the Catholic faith– good Catholic students we were of this Jesuit institution –against the disparagement of the author who favors the Protestant Church. Spenser extols the latter in lavish ways in his epic novel via the lead character Queene Gloriana, who is Elizabeth I personified.
We sat waiting in wrought iron benches in our professor’s beautiful garden, defying the thick fog that was starting to roll in. The professor lived a wink away from the main campus; soft strains of classical music seemed to play nonstop from his study at all hours while the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted all over the place.
At the appointed time, it was the professor’s housekeeper who emerged from the door, coffee and cookie jar on hand. The professor was indisposed, she said, but please stay a while, while she arranged a large pot of steaming coffee, mugs and cookies, on a round stone table next to a small marble statue of a Knight Templar. It was comfortably warm in the garden. Coffee and biscotti made it perfect.
It was then, following coffee indulgence, that a group of us began the obligatory social niceties about the coming Christmas. Plans, travels, gifts, food. Three of us seated together traded tales of celebrations, each one proving quite novel and exotic. Hiroko from Japan suggested we gather in her apartment to continue what was turning out to be an interesting exchange of holiday highlights. Three cars eventually steered through the city’s steep inclines reaching Laurel Heights in a short time.
Inside Hiroko’s Apartment
Inside Hiroko’s apartment, we settled in wide upholstered chairs. Over hot genmaicha tea and crispy rice crackers, she delighted us with holiday celebrations part-Japanese, part-western, such as KFC chicken that enjoys great patronage during the holidays in Japan; it began in 1974 when traditional turkey became scarce. And that Christmas is another Valentine’s day in Japan focused more on couples in romantic relationships than on families.
That’s when Hiroko prompted us towards a tall Christmas tree by the window. The artificial tree, half-decked with tiny twinkling lights stood firmly on a heavy 3-inch thick War and Peace book in Japanese language which Hiroko said she finally finished the day before, hence the unfinished tree. “How about helping me decorate?” she coaxed, and Kvell and I happily obliged.
Hiroko brought out 3 plastic buckets of ornaments. She said her mother sent some from Japan; others she bought from local merchants and still others like the colorful origami birds, flowers, fans and hats she made herself.
For the next 4 hours during that first Advent Sunday, the three of us — Hiroko, a Japanese girl who studied philosophy, Kvell from Poland who majored in theater arts and myself, an English major from the Philippines, enjoyed trading stories about Christmas, our countries and literature.
We festooned Hiroko’s tree with wooden novelties shaped like Mt. Fuji, tiny tablets with haiku verses, globe ornaments and little kimono ensembles. We sipped yet another tea variant, a powder, called macha, apparently highly valued for being both a drink and as flavor for sweets and other dishes.
I met both girls in a humanities class composed of irregular students all struggling under a compact winter schedule to qualify for the next university graduations. So on that particular Sunday, we exchanged insights about required readings, who among the 6 knights in Fairie Queene was a favorite and which virtues; our favorite authors, whether or not medieval literature was still relevant, films we recently watched, destinations we wanted to visit. Conversations straddled between holidays and school work, plans after graduation, how we miss home.
Later, that Sunday, darkening skies found Hiroko’s tree eventually beaming with eensy twinkling lights and an entire spectrum of western and Japanese-style baubles and frills prettily owning their respective places on the tree.
Hiroko set us off each with a small bag of mochi made of glutinous rice with sweet bean filling. We agreed to help decorate Kvell’s tree the following Sunday.
Decorating Kvell’s Tree
The following three Advent meetings after the canceled humanities class turned into rich cultural quests for each of us. With Christmas trees waiting to burst into flaming brilliance, our friendship grew while conversations scaled back and forth from the philosophical to downright silly and wild, the exchanges a cacophony of accents and weird vocabulary, a few ungrammatical points here and there but always respectful and funny.
The following Sunday, we were in the Polish girl’s apartment in the Presidio. Kvell had a live fir tree still smelling of fresh pine but already with a beautiful oval-shaped photo of a smiling woman perched on one branch. “It’s to honor my late mother,” Kvell said. “She was a devoted Christian and loved Christmas. I miss her very much.” The thought of Kvell’s mother crept a somber tinge in the beginning hour of our get together. To spring back, Kvell played selections of Polish Christmas melodies; a few even carried strains of native polka dance steps.
Kvell recalled how Christmases were joyful family events back in Krakow, hosting relatives eager to visit Wieliczka Salt Mines, home to salt sculptures of famous world events, iconic celebrities and religious figures in this 13th century foundry. Kvell lighted up as she described the facility. “You will descend 380 steps into the deep recesses — you will find not only carvings and sculptures, but wide expanses of space that include full-size churches and chapels, entertainment venues, parks and restaurants and an array of artistic components with music and various forms of visual imagery –a whole different world all under the earth.”
In no time at all, we were busy decorating Kvell’s fresh tree with all things Polish: colorful egg shells, stained glass ornaments, stone resin Santas, wooden toys, dried plants and the then emerging minimalist art offerings like short colored holiday trees, away from the kitschy side of Christmas of the west.
Conversations varied: Kvell lamented over how literature is replete with heroines dying for the most uneventful reasons like heartbreaks, TB, drownings, and suicide. Hiroko agreed. I did, too. And we recalled the tragic deaths of Anna Karenina, Ibsen’s Nora in Doll’s House (German version), Emma Bovary, Elaine from Lady of Shallot, Hamlet’s Ophelia, Cleopatra and the unfortunate queens of England’s Henry VIII.
We feasted on pierogi and zapienka, bread slices scorched, flaming with melted yellow cheese. As we added the finishing touches of strung red and gold tiny florets and cotton balls on the fir tree, Kvell served a refreshing apple wine preferred by workers in the field, she explained “It cools parched throats, it’s healthy, cheap and nourishing,” she added. Kvell played some music again and insisted we learn a few basic steps of Polish polka before we said goodbye. And we did.
A Filipino Christmas
What began as a friendly holiday chat in school progressed into a delightful cultural and literary journey for our group. So when my turn came on the third Advent Sunday I was ready with my boxes of Philippine-styled holiday decorations. They came borrowed from or gifted by friends who learned of our group’s cultural spin and wanted to showcase our native ingenuity and creative prowess.
I had a few of my own paraphernalia saved from previous years — Nativity characters made of capiz slides, a shell lantern of some 400 tiny seashells I bought from a family who made and sold lanterns as a source of income. I even had small cutouts of barong fabric formed into flowers and embroidered stars. The rest were salakots and miniature picture frames from dried weeds and shiny brass bells that actually rang. Little pearl rosary beads and wires and tin plates fashioned into small musical instruments completed the accouterments.
Kvell and Hiroko arrived early. I treated them to calamansi juice and fried lumpia with vinegar dip. I placed dried mango slices on the side and a box of buttered ensaimada as well.
The fruit juice was sweet-sour but refreshing, better than lemon, claimed Kvell. She was astonished that a large mug of juice could come from such tiny fruits. Hiroko marveled at the Nativity scene made of papier mache assembled near the foot of my tree. The paper figures were chiseled, painted over, and sturdy and did not look like paper at all. My tree was made of real branches and twigs bound together and planted on a heavy wooden slab. My tree, bereft of trappings, was ready.
We sang Christmas tunes as we adorned my tree. My two classmates inquired about the ornaments as we moved around, reaching for the branches that needed embellishments. I told them about Christmas that starts in September, the dawn Simbang Gabi church services and delicious rice cakes and ginger tea that follow, the thousands of spectacular lanterns and stars whose lights gyrate in perfect staccato against the evening skies.
Kvell asked about holiday entertainment. Hiroko knew about the stupendous fireworks on New Year’s eve that rock the country with repetitive big-bang explosions. On cue, I regaled them with stories that paint a Christmas picture suffused with religious and as well as commercial flavors.
Bonded by Books: A Friendship Shaped by Literature and Opera
We discussed the final exams we took just the day before and engaged in a riveting exchange about the rich tapestry of classical literature.
“I can’t wait until the end of novels I read,” said Kvell. “I always imagine playing out on stage the significant episodes and choice passages from these novels.”
Hiroko claimed she watches out for thematic elements and moral suasions. “They somehow soothe bruised sensibilities and souls that need comforting.”
I chimed in that I love to read at leisure, unhurried, savoring the beauty of the language at every turn.
“Beautiful young ladies dying is romantic, ” declared Kvell, again, faking death in the process. “Did you know that doomed females of the opera are more popular than the dying male protagonists?” She sounded ready to take up the case.
I caught the drift and added my take that female characters of top operas performed had more female leads dying than male characters. Hiroko immediately declared, “Yes! Madama Butterfly!” feeling some sort of affinity with Cio-Cio San. Kvell announced “La Traviata,” then “Carmen.” I rounded it up with La Boheme and Tosca. We agreed that even in fiction, women seldom score well in romance, and men almost always emerge victorious and unscathed from romantic and physical battles.
Outside of opera, I mentioned Eponine in Les Miserables, Kim in Miss Saigon, and Hester in Scarlet Letter. I also cited Noli’s Maria Clara, but neither of my friends has read nor heard about Rizal’s work.
Hiroko, Kvell, and I managed to keep in touch for the first seven years following our graduation from USF. Each of us eventually drifted away but the friendship and cultural journey we took out of a commitment to decorate our Christmas trees come back to me in fragments every Christmas time. I still miss Hiroko and Kvell and our trees that stood testament to spirited exchanges about the books we have read and learned from and our diverse backgrounds that touched our lives in deeply profound ways.

Connie Triggiano is currently Board Secretary of Circa-Pintig, a Chicago community theater organization. She works as Academic and English tutor assisting foreign students to pass IELTS, TOEFL, Celpic, ESL and other English exams to gain admission to universities in English speaking countries. She also trains greencard holders to pass US citizenship exams and interview. She worked for many years as Vice-President of Chicago-based Leo Burnett Advertising in its Manila office where she managed the advertising accounts of the country’s biggest brands: Procter & Gamble, Pepsi Cola International, BPI, Vicks, Wyeth and Cathay Pacific. She edited a travel newspaper in Singapore and taught college freshmen in a local university. Connie graduated with a BA degree, major in English, from the University of San Francisco in California while working as an information officer for a United Way agency. She took up MS in Advertising at the Asian Institute for the Development of Advertising, UST Graduate School.
Leave a Reply