The Pista

The Pista is a local term used for a certain holiday in a year when the rural folks in our country pay homage to a certain christian saint whom they believe watches over their little town, their crops, the rainclouds, their dog, their chickens and all other things supernatural.

To each rural town, there is a certain saint who watches over it, and to each of the multitude of christian saints, a day to his own. Designating a saint unto a town was the idea of our spanish colonizers centuries ago, perhaps for collectively establishing the local's identity as a town, or have the locals comprehend to the diversity of holiness bestowed by christianity to mortals.

A pista is traditionally a thanksgiving celebration to these christian saints, along with annual homecomings, reunions, rural and inter-town socializing and a grand banquet in each house, for guests arriving on an assumed invitation because of the pista. It has become the prime holiday for every rural folk, beating other red letter days of the calendar even christmas. And that annual attendance to these pista is very crucial to the lives of these people, the pista has become an implied personal holiday to a rural folk and in itself an explanation for a valid excuse to be absent from work, regardless of any urgency and even if it would demerit them with negligence or irresponsiblility, just to attend to their pista.

I dont give a damn about tradition or the pista pilgrimage these people take every year to their rural town. But most of these christian saints have found their pista unto the month of May, and with it being an assumed legal holiday, our business is always in short of labor during the days of May, with dozens of our employees joining the annual flight of their lives to their pista.

Less employees means more work for me, screw the pista.