Holy Week and TV

When I was younger, Holy week TV was practically non-existent.  The only thing you can watch would be Father Peyton's Rosary and the Stations of the Cross series.  And that would not show Jesus's face.  Of course there would be the biblical movies in theaters, and on some TV spots.  Movies like "The Robe", "Samson and Delilah", "Ten Commandments", etc.  Nowadays, there's series marathons.  Admittedly, I got caught up in one of the marathons. And "7th Heaven" is addictive, it makes sense and a whole lot more fun to watch end to end.

 

There was a time my family filleted and dried their own daing for Holy Week.  That was something.  Specially considering that in those days, samaral (barangan) was a low priority buy and not very popular fish in the 70's.  There was even that one time when we dried fish roe (samaral) for Holy Week.  I can't remember when was the last time I had dried fish eggs.

 

There was also one other thing which we did before, and that was to go to one church and pray upon the Stations of the Cross.  Sometime back this changed with a lot of families.  There was more mobility, people wanted to be away from home, in a way, and still be in the Holy Week mode, those with cars started visiting churches, as much as possible, it became a sort of church pilgrimage running around town and the nearest provinces going to twelve churches.  Twelve churches?!!  I find it hard to understand as the concept and tradition of Visita Iglesia loses meaning when you spend more time driving and travelling than praying.  Just my take on the matter.  If some people think that way, that's their problem.

 

Times have really changed.

--andoy

21 March 2008