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For parish choir members, the “ber” months mean only one thing: Simbang Gabi. In layman’s terms, from December 16 up to 24, in Lagro, all twelve choirs of the Ascension Parish are going to sing Christmas songs at early dawn masses, and everybody expects nothing short of a concert performance.

Or at least, our neighbors trust that we will not mess up the songs they’ve been used to hearing in our community. And it is inevitable that they will compare one choir’s singing with that of another, so the pressure is on. But despite the air of competition, we’re great friends with those from other choirs and we like to keep it that way.

To learn our repertoire, however, means that we are going to camp out in the church for as long as we have the strength and energy to do so. We are kind of like athletes, only there are no actual contests or attires involved, and the exertion comes from the diaphragm. Our choir in particular made an effort to start by the summer, as soon as Holy Week was through. By May we started with A Christmas Carol and Diwa ng Pasko. Now we’ve moved on to lung-busting pieces such as Jingle Bells Calypso and Carol of the Bells, and I swear I’m looking forward to New Year already.

The difficulty actually comes from trying to coordinate the schedules of fifteen to twenty individuals, some of whom are part of the labor force, most of whom are students. And this is why our practices this year, starting January, have been set for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – this way, he or she has no excuse to miss at least one of the practices. Because of this I have virtually no social life, except when I beg off now and then for dinners and movie dates. It’s hard to explain to people just why I do this, and I feel I don’t have to, but I’ll get to that later.

And when everyone is finally assembled and ready to vocalize, I have great compassion for our current musical director. He has the patience of a saint even if the members are keyed up and constantly chatting with one another. I still can’t get over the fact that he reorganized his work schedule just for the group to sound decent enough.  There is one improvement, though – we now make use of technology to learn our pieces. Before, we had to play on the organ, for each voice, the notes to sing. This gets tedious if you have to teach fifteen to twenty people their different voice parts. Now all our director has to do is play on his laptop a pre-programmed song, and we dutifully save it on our phones, mp3s or USBs.

When we have learned our parts and can hit the notes to the satisfaction of our director, we face the hard part – blending. This is where the good-natured ribbing comes in. When the sopranos sing, the boys make mock gestures of their neck veins bursting. In turn, we smile when the basses try to get their notes right. All this time, our director gives instructions (“altos, refresh tayo” or “bass, ulitin ko ang tono nyo”) and we follow. When we somehow get it right (after a week or two months, depending on the piece), the joy is indescribable.

Of course, staying in a choir and committing to one is voluntary and purely for altruistic spirit, so you can imagine the drama we get from time to time. Attendance is always an issue. My mother has endured this for ten years, and she knows that during the Christmas season I cannot go to family outings or gatherings without at least a week’s warning because I practically live in the church. I mentioned earlier that it’s hard to explain just why we do this, year after year after year, and one incident comes to mind.

Just last month, we were working on the very long and head-tone-riddled Simbanggabi at the fourth floor of the church. It was already 8:30 Sunday night, and we’ve been rehearsing since afternoon, after our assigned mass. I was tired and complaining to my seatmate that I would fall asleep later before I even got to change clothes. We didn’t notice that a group of little kids had stopped to watch. When we finished singing, they burst into applause. The choir broke into giggles. More than the adulation, it was the feeling that we could reach out to people through our efforts. That we could make people forget their problems for an hour or so, even if Christmas isn’t always happy for everyone.

About ten weekends to go before showtime. Did I mention being tired and whiny? I don’t think so.