Joe Philippines: Christmas On the Island

Christmas in the Philippines is a much different experience than here in the States. In prior trips at this time, the air has been full of sulfur fumes as millions of pounds of fireworks were set off in a non-stop stream from sometime in the week before Christmas to the day after New Years. I have always struggled to explain but it is like being in the middle of the fireworks display for the fourth of July at any major city on the east coast and by middle, I mean the middle of where they shoot them off. Riding through a city on New Year's Eve in a motorized tricycle, I could hear the cherry bombs bouncing off the metal enclosure around me a second or two before they exploded. It was spooky and dangerous for sure but that was the Philippines where the birth rate far exceeds the death rate.

This time was different and I noticed it almost as soon as we got off the airplane. The sulfur smell or the sounds of exploding fireworks wasn't present. In fact, the only fireworks I heard the entire trip were in the hour leading up to midnight on New Year's Eve and even those were not plentiful. It turned out that President Duterte had banned most of the fireworks and municipalities had put time restrictions on when they could be used. The reason was mostly a safety issue where in the year before, over 600+ (and I would guess that a very conservative number) suffered serious injuries due to fireworks. Although I miss the atmosphere of so many people celebrating for well over a week, I didn't miss the fireworks.

Christmas is a major holiday in the Philippines and people really get into the experience. Groups of people roam the neighborhoods for days leading up to the day singing Christmas carols for money. They pull up to your gate and sing until you cough up some money and then it is off to the next house regardless of where they were in the song so the lesson here is to always wait until the finished before paying the bribe. The groups were nice but more often enough it was just a homeless looking fellow banging on a pot with a metal rod to a rough version of Jingle Bells. Those you tended to pay off quicker.

In my experiences here in the states, the lead up to Christmas Day centers around Santa Claus and his arrival. Rarely are the religious aspects on display. In the Philippines, I only rarely see an image of Santa Claus and really have never seen any of the kids even mention his name. Instead, Christmas Eve is spent preparing for the midnight festivities and going to mass. At the mass we went to, the Christmas story was acted out, but to make it like only a Filipino can, it was set to the song "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins. If that weren't enough, they actually had a shooting star streaking across the church ceiling complete with glitter bombs. All I can say is "only in the Philippines." It was awesome.

After mass, we go home and get the cooking going in high gear as we prepare enough food for a small army to consume with leftovers enough to take home to their families. Much like we count down the New Year, they count down the arrival of Jesus with lots of noise, eating copious amount of food and present exchanging. Eventually we drift off to bed in the early hours of the day.

Eventually we wake up later on Christmas day which is generally spent visiting others or receiving visitors to exchange more gifts. When we go home for Christmas, we ship three or four boxes full of gifts ahead of time with most of the gifts being for someone specifically in mind. There are a few gifts we buy in broad categories like old/young male/female. Among those we have sort of a slush fund of trinkets to hand out to those who visit. In the worst case, we just give some money to the kids (which is expected) and that suffices.

But never is there a mention of Santa Claus and I find that very refreshing.

This was written shortly after my 2018 trip to the Philippines. I'm not sure when my next trip to the Philippines will be but when it occurs it will be over Christmas. That future trip will be my third Christmas spent in the Philippines (The first Christmas being in 2005)  and I will be excited to note what changes have occurred.