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Happy birthday, Jesus Christ!

THERE’LL be much merrymaking and revelry today. But we’ll be at a loss what the hell this eating and drinking binge and the consequent hang-over, bum tummy and jumpy blood pressure is all about.

Were you born in this neck of the woods, those petty bureaucrats and mindless factotums at the National Census and Statistics Office will likely give you a thorough screwing. You’re an undocumented birth, you’re not supposed to exist.

Existence hereabouts needs to be backed up by tons and truckloads of documentation. You’ll likely won’t be issued a TIN, an SSS number, a voter’s ID, a driver’s license even a valid passport—every trenchant idiot and imbecile in civil service plying out identification cards will take pleasure in effacing every shred of evidence that points to your existence. That may explain why life in this country has been identifiably nearer to desperation and destitution.

Only mages and wizards, wise men wizened in long-lost eldritch knowledge would attest how you came about in this world. And there’s been a dearth of wise men and women hereabouts for ages, why, our electorate have to settle for clowns, geeks, dullards, bipeds, ogres and cretins to enthrone in elective posts.

As those sketchy reports of yore have it, shepherds tending to their flocks also sought you out and paid homage. Ah, those simpletons likely brought their livestock along, such a saraband of men and beasts gathered about an infant in a manger must have been an odd sight.

Now that was a throwback to an era in which a nation on the march streamed out of Egypt to seek a suitable stretch of real estate to establish a decent territory. The Pasko we know of traces its roots to the paschal lamb, its blood offered to the Angel of Death, the carcass broiled and served as meal in every faithful’s abode.

That was to be a ghastly omen. A foreshadowing of future events in which the lamb of God will be similarly butchered, then, offered like a piece of roasted carcass to sate appetites of the ravenous.

Not too many amongst us will celebrate your birth, why, we’ve taken you out of today’s orgy of eating, drinking, partying. It’s just another official holiday in our drab, banal lives.

And we’re not about to remember whose birthday it was today, that can’t be established. There’ll be demons and devils to pay at the NSO, among many other offices that seek account of documents and records as proof of one’s existence.

Despite such trenchant deviltry that bedevil us, we’d like your company anytime. Here’s to you again: Happy birthday, Jesus Christ!

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