Christmas is Commitment

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!”

Did you hear that? Exciting, right? We are all excited for the longest and the merriest celebration of Christmas season! We started to count the days from September to December. And up to this moment, we are really planning for great moments for family reunions and special gatherings with our friends and relatives. It is part of the Filipino tradition to spend more time with the people we love and share every moment of happiness with them.

Back to our childhood memory—we believed in a dream that Santa Claus will come to our home and secretly put gifts beside the Christmas tree or put inside the Christmas socks which we prepared. We believed that Christmas is a time for new clothes, for new shoes and for new toys. We believed that we should always receive gifts from our ninongs and ninangs. And most of all, we believed that all of our wishes will come true.

But as we grow older, what we had believed somehow changed. Maturity captured our dreams and we are now living in reality that Christmas is far different from what we learned from our childhood days.

The most important is that we see the smile on the faces of our children because they are excited for your gifts. We see the hope in our elders because they knew you will visit them after a long time. It’s time for reunions and reconciliation.

For Filipinos, material things are less important, relationships and commitments are more important. Far different from the ‘happiness’ we felt when we received new toys and play it alone in our room.

Filipinos are very warm in celebrating Christmas, so be thankful that we don’t have snow in the Philippines because it only make us cold and frigid. Also, be thankful if Santa Clause did not originate in our country because if he does, maybe we don’t bother ourselves to buy any presents for our family and friends.

Who is Santa Clause in your present life? To answer this question, you need to look at the people around you. It could be your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, or your special someone who fulfills your heart with happiness and joy.

Christmas is about keeping relationships and letting it grow for years, and that is a unique evidence of how Filipinos value the precious time of Jesus Christ.