BREAKING NEWS: SANTA'S QUARANTINED IN THE NORTH POLE

Swatch launches the HoHoOuch, a limited-edition watch that should remind us that, no matter what the odds, there is no stopping time, especially the time to celebrate hope

- AA PATAWARAN

If 2020 were a watch, it would be a Swatch. In fact, Swatch has just unboxed a limited-edition watch, with Tessa Prieto Valdes and Matteo Guidicelli leading the fun ceremony—ceremony is too formal a word for the occasion, it was in fact a fun, crazy party with the hosts at the Swatch Center on Arnaiz Avenue, decked out like a wonderland of graffiti, featuring positive words associated with Christmas at such a challenging time as this, while the rest of us were on Zoom. But the games were so interactive and the hosts, especially Tessa, were so big in personality and joie de vivre that they poured out of our Zoom screens.

But yeah, if 2020 were a watch, it would be a Swatch. It’s the Swatch season special HoHoOuch, in which Santa in his red outfit and the minimalistic indices stand out against the white dial. Replete with a matching transparent snow-printed strap, perfect when paired with our Christmas sweater or Santa’s stocking cap, it is simply fun. Yet, its message is quite profound, a knock on the head if you are the type so easily discouraged from embracing the joys of the season by a hiccup as minor as a year-long pandemic.

The theme of the unboxing, which doubled as a year-ender party, as well as a Christmas get-together, for which Swatch Philippines president Virgie Ramos, who has made the brand synonymous to fun since the late 1980s, was “Santa Crash Landing.” Not oblivious to the challenges of the ongoing global crisis, which threatens to cancel the most wonderful time of the year for some of us, the HoHoOuch pokes fun at something we regard as dead-serious, not so much to make light of it, but to encourage us to keep going, no matter what the odds, because after all life is what it is, often tough, so might as well get jiggy with it.