What are the downsides to the supposedly merriest season of the year?

Let us count them: profiteers, counterfeits, toxic toys, street- crime surge, firecracker injuries, stray bullets from indiscriminate firing of weapons, and the almost mandatory fires that go with them.

The year just past was even made more painfully difficult by the devastation of Sendong that left some 1,500 dead in Mindanao , not to mention the massive crop damage and the destruction of private properties and vital public infrastructure.

Indeed Sendong provided a bloody exclamation point to the usual holiday greetings.   

Whew! When you think about these things, somehow the cheer that goes with the holidays is diminished.

But wait. There is one more.

Some politicians have a perverse, opportunistic streak in exploiting the holiday season.

Thus, we agree with and support the Catholic bishops’ call for feisty Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago to include politicians in the ban on coming out with Christmas and New Year greetings in her “anti-epal” bill.

These pro-forma greetings may in themselves seem benign, but they obviously retain a “recall effect” on the voters until the next elections. In this sense, these signs are self-serving. 

Fr. Edu Gariguez, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-National Secretariat for SocialAction, Justice and Peace executive secretary, said politicians should not spend public funds to print banners and tarpaulins to greet their constituents “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year.”

“With or without this epal bill, we cannot deny the fact that this came from taxpayers’ money,” he was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying. “It’s good if it’s true that it’s their own money that they used for these tarpaulins.They put their names there because their intention is really for the people to remember them during election time.”

Epal is a slang term used for mapapel, Filipino for attention-grabber.

Gariguez said dioceses should not allow politicians to put up their tarpaulins and streamers on church premises.

“Although the decision depends on every diocese, but I think that should be prohibited so as not to be politicized because others might think that it’s some sort of an endorsement or something,” he said.

“I don’t think there is a need to issue a directive for this, all you need is prudence.”

The anti-epal bill seeks to ban the names and photos of politicians from billboards on government projects.

Santiago had previously said that public officials must not claim credit for projects funded by taxpayers’ money.