Mythological monsters for All Saints' Day.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Neal H. Cruz

I DON'T know why we have to borrow the Halloween and its pumpkins, witches and black cats from the West. After all, we have our own home-grown mythological monsters that in the old days scared-believe it or not, in this modern 2lst century, they still do-millions of youngsters. In fact, the aswangs and manananggals still scare many gullible adults, thanks to the competing televisions newscasts, the so-called "tabloids of the air" that, because of the ratings war, dignify stories of these monsters haunting squatter colonies. That and the frequent stories on TV of "miraculous" appearances of the image of the Virgin Mary, of statues crying bloody tears, of young visionaries, of spiritual healing, and of snakes born as twins of human babies, "idiotize" the Filipino masses.

Thanks to our penchant for imitating other cultures, our own tradition of "pangangaluluwa" during All Saints' Day-when groups of young men and women serenade their neighbors while others steal chicken under the house, all in good fun-is fast being replaced by the westernized "trick or treat" rituals in the exclusive villages. In a few more decades, our own traditions and mythological monsters will be erased.

When I was growing up in Malabon, I and my generation were scared no end of these mythological monsters. Although Malabon is now a city and a part of Metro Manila, it was then a rural town with fishponds, rivers, rice fields, commercial vegetable gardens-and a gullible population. What's more, the elders were good storytellers who scared the youngsters with tales of these and other monsters not only on All Saints' Day but also on moonlit nights.

At that time, we lived in a family compound in the middle of fishponds. Its only connection to the street was a long fishpond dike. Sanciangco Street ran for about a kilometer from Tonsuya (where you got rides to and from Divisoria, across the wooden bridge to barrio Catmon) to Tenejeros on the other end. If you lived in Catmon or Tenejeros, you had to walk the whole kilometer. At night, the stretch through the river and fishponds was very dark; but the people taking that route had nothing to fear about robbers and drug addicts. What they were afraid of were the monsters that they imagined were lurking in the dark.

At the street corner was a street lamp, beside a big tamarind tree at the edge of the pond. At night we would gather under its light to play patintero or batong preso. When we got tired of playing, the storytelling would begin.