Feb Fair!
by Oliver Carlos
There are many things people look forward to in the month of February. Although not an official holiday, Valentine’s Day seems like one. Before the pandemic, the restaurants would all be booked on that day, monster traffic jams can be seen on the streets leading to commercial centers, and flowers would sell like pancakes. In the schools, the Junior-Senior prom is what teens get excited about. February is indeed the love month.
In UPLB, we had an added attraction on top of the proms and dates in fancy restaurants. We have the Feb Fair. The Baker field gets filled with make-shift booths showcasing the student orgs. There would also be food stalls, tiangge selling clothes and souvenir items, and in some years, there were rides like a Ferris wheel and a caterpillar. In the evenings, there would be concerts. This festival would last for one whole week. The Feb Fair would always start on a Monday and end on the Sunday night closest to Valentine’s Day. It’s open for all folks, it’s visited by hundreds or even thousands people from inside and outside the university.
My earliest recollection of the Feb Fair was when I was in Grade 4 or 5 in the early 1980s. Our teacher brought us there one afternoon. We went to the booth of an environmental org, Haribon Foundation. They prepared a puppet show for us about deforestation. In the end, the puppets who looked like Sesame Street puppets, sang the popular Barbara Streisand song, “Memory.” They’re like saying that one day the forests would just be memories, if we don’t take care of them.
Since that year, I would always visit the Feb Fair with my family and friends. Even when we were no longer Los Banos residents, my wife and I would still visit the Feb Fair. Just hanging around and feeling the Feb-ibig atmosphere made our February complete.
But during the pandemic, things changed. We drove to UPLB one February afternoon just to check out if there was still a Feb Fair. I had mixed emotions seeing a very empty Baker field. I thought, “This spot was supposed to be teeming with people and booths this time of the year. Where are they now?”
The virus is indeed a game-changer. It has erased this long-running tradition in my alma mater and hometown. The Feb Fair began during Martial Law and continued annually until 2020. This thing that is “a part of life” is no longer one, at least for this year. Hopefully this is just temporary. But just like the puppets’ song, the Feb Fair, for now, is just “memories.”
In the Bible’s love chapter, I Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul also mentioned that many things will one day cease. The use of spiritual gifts and many church activities and traditions will someday come to an end, when we shall see Jesus face to face. But as for now, 3 things remain. What are these?
“And now we have these three: faith and hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:13, NLV)
Of these 3, love is the greatest because it is the only one that will remain in heaven. Faith will end because we will now be seeing face to face the object of our faith, Jesus. Hope will likewise end, because all that we hoped for shall be given to us when we are there in God’s presence. But love will still be our heavenly activity for eternity. Because God is love, we will continue feeling his endless love for us, and we will be loving him back, forever and ever.
So for now, let us continue meditating on God’s great love for us. Let us also continue loving God and loving others, just like how he loves you.
