Advent’s stars
From my childhood, there was one landmark that always caught my eye as we crossed MacArthur Bridge, and this was a slogan emblazoned on the facade of FEATI University: “Look up, young man, look up.”
FEATI is a popular university founded by Salvador Araneta and his wife, Victoria Lopez, reflecting his many dreams for Filipinos, someone who probably looked up to the stars and launched many education initiatives, from agriculture to economic philosophy.
But I want to talk about stars now, taking off from FEATI’s “look up, young man” (and young woman). I think it’s a slogan that addresses one of the most glaring deficiencies we have in education.
When we say, “look up,” we use it more as a religious expression, beseeching the heavens for favors, including passing exams. But “look up” should also be an admonition that carries with it a call to work hard and to dare to dream boldly.
Even in a more literal sense, look up should be a call to look up to the skies and wonder what’s up there. Since the University of the Philippines (UP) set up its space program (now transformed into the Philippine Space Agency or PhilSA, I’ve wondered about how much the public, especially our students in high school and college, are aware of the agency’s importance.
I’ve also wondered about how our students in the humanities and arts have appreciated the potentials of “looking up,” which has spurred literary and cinematic masterpieces (think of China and South Korea). We won’t be able to produce quality science fiction if our schools don’t encourage transdisciplinary efforts to get the students to think laterally across science and the humanities, Christmas stars included.
I know our atmosphere is so polluted it’s hard to convince students to step out of the house at night and look at the skies, but I have some hopes that there’s some interest. Last October, I was visiting a Taiwanese university, and there was some buzz among students about the harvest moon, one of the full moons brighter than usual. Many people are unaware that the extra brightness of moons in the latter part of the year is given many meanings in different cultures, including the Chinese full moon festival (mooncakes!).
Back in Taiwan, there were faculty and students who invited our Filipino contingent to go out and look at the autumn moon, which was truly spectacular. But I was even more thrilled when one of my daughters emailed me a photo of the harvest moon, which she and her friends caught during impromptu moon-watching that night.
I would think our newspapers and mass media—traditional newspapers as well as online—could better publicize these celestial events with explanations on why we have these special events.
Dante Ambrosio, a brilliant UP historian, wrote a book “Balatik,” about Filipino ethnoastronomy, the many cultural aspects of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Many of us Filipinos hardly know the English names of stars constellation, much less their local names. Balatik itself refers to Orion.
The wonders of the sky are, in fact, incorporated into folktales, including textiles. I’ve written about Rennel Lavilla, a UP Visayas student who is also a master artisan, particularly of woven fabrics, and one afternoon at the fabrics exhibit, I listened with rapt attention as he explained a scarf he had woven to honor their Gawad Manlilikha (national artists from indigenous Filipino groups) Federico “Nong Pedring” Caballero. Rennel explained his hand-embroidered flora and fauna and celestial objects of the Panay Bukidnon. The constellation Balatik appeared three times in his fabric creation, representing the different times it appears in the night sky.
There are many ways to get people interested in looking up at the skies. The Atlantic Monthly has a 2025 (meaning 2025 to 2026) Advent calendar, devoting one photo each day of Advent to photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope, which will make you reimagine the stars—not just as tiny twinkling lights in the sky but as dramatic shows of gas and light, from protostars still forming to dying but still powerful celestial bodies—in a column before the end of 2025, explaining young and old stars (yes, we can think of the human equivalents), together with links to the photographs, which you can appreciate even if there isn’t a clear sky outside. I’ll have tips on how stargazing can bring new meanings to Advent and Christmas and the year ahead.
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michael.tan@inquirer.net
