WITH HELEN J. CATALBAS
WE ARE always fascinated with visiting, being in or at least gazing at ancestral houses.
For purposes of this column item, we are referring to ancestral residential houses, as distinguished from government or commercial houses, although some residential houses may have been used as either in later years when some family downlines sold or donated the ancestral houses for some reasons or others.
Most ancestral houses have wide staircases, spacious living rooms that double as ballrooms, dining tables that each could accommodate at least two dozen of family members and guest diners, and massive walls and posts. This kind of ancestral houses make our minds wander and wonder about the kind of life the ancestors and their next generations lived then.
Ancestral houses are, more often than not, included in local cultural tour packages sold by tour operators to foreign and domestic tourists. Skillful tour guides weave exciting stories about what the past, present and venture on the future of these ancestral houses. These tour guides can narrate past stories and make their tourists feel being transported to life several centuries ago.
Contemporary tour commentaries could include weddings of celebrities in some ancestral houses converted into event places for economic reasons. Certain ancestral houses were venues of theme debuts reminiscent of how coming-out parties were held in the olden times.
Ancestral houses mean many things to many people. Some look at them as symbols of a glorious past and monuments of social and economic differences. Still other groups would look at ancestral houses as proof of superiority of some races over others, testaments of the lives of masters or lords and servants or slaves.
However huge or tiny, whatever they mean to us, how sublime or gory the stories they may hold and for how much are their material worth, ancestral houses are here to stay for historical, emotional and practical reasons.
Let’s preserve and celebrate the ancestral houses of our planet! (HJC/PN)
