Celebrate Christmas the Filipino way

The Filipino people are now in the midst of what is proudly celebrated as the longest Christmas season in the world. Last year, Christmas came a month after Typhoon Yolanda created massive destruction and caused a more muted and simpler Christmas. But today, the nation has bounced back and we are definitely in a celebratory mood. Almost nine out of ten Filipinos believe that 2015 will be a better year.

While the whole world now seems to have adopted Christmas as a holiday season and has globalized its celebration, there are many traditions that continue to remain uniquely Filipino. Most countries, like Japan, concentrate on the commercial side of Christmas and not as the birthday of Christ.

The Philippines, however, is overwhelmingly a Christian and deeply spiritual country. In fact, anthropologists and historians theorize that we were a very spiritual country long before we were Christianized. Pre-Spanish historians have written about the peoples’ belief in the one god or Bathala and the Babaylan who were female priestesses.

Filipino Christmas traditions are very much intertwined with religious symbolisms and rituals. Alejandro Roces, former Secretary of Education and a preeminent Filipino cultural historian, is one of the many that have written on these uniquely Filipino Christmas rituals and traditions.

Simbang Gabi

It is only in the Philippines where the official Christmas season opens with the nine-day series of masses celebrated at dawn. Last year, I spent Christmas in California with my daughter’s family. I noticed that several parishes were holding these early morning masses and announcing them as a Filipino Christmas tradition.

Roces wrote that the Simbang Gabi is actually a misnomer because the masses are celebrated at four o’clock in the morning. But it is called “Night Masses” because it is still dark at night. There are many versions of how this practice started. But I have always thought that Roces had the most interesting and uniquely Filipino version.

The Simbang Gabi is a tradition that demonstrates how Christmas has become Filipinized. Even during the early Spanish colonial period, the Christmas season coincided with the rice harvest season when farmers would have to go to the fields, at the crack of dawn, to harvest their crops. In order to accommodate these farmers, the novena masses were celebrated at four o’clock in the morning. A novena actually means “prayers and devotions for a special purpose repeated for nine consecutive days.”

This practice has become such a part of a Filipino Christmas that today, even in urban centers like Metro Manila, Cebu and San Francisco where there are certainly no farmers, Filipinos attend these dawn masses which have become a custom that has marked our Christmas as uniquely Filipino.

Noche Buena

The Christmas Eve fiesta celebration or the Noche Buena is a tradition whose two main features are the social gathering of the family and preparing food as the centerpiece of the evening affair. The most common food associated with the Simbang Gabi and the Noche Buena are the ones with pre-Hispanic roots. These are the rice cakes or puto bumbong and the rice pudding.

According to Roces, these were originally given to pagan harvest gods and spirits as thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest. So when the first Spanish Catholic missionaries came to the Philippines, it was not difficult for them to convince the native Filipinos to transform the pagan celebration into a Christmas ritual. After all, although Filipinos were now predominantly Catholic, it was still harvest season throughout the islands, and the Filipinos were still in the mood for celebration and thanksgiving.

The Noche Buena and the Simbang Gabi are, therefore, Filipino traditions that have its roots in our Catholic religion and pre-Hispanic culture.

Christmas lantern or Parol

There are many Western-influenced trappings that have become popular all over the world and with the Filipino upper and middle classes. The most ubiquitous are the Christmas tree, complete with fake snow, and Santa Claus.

I have always felt that the Christmas pine tree and the “dreaming of a white Christmas” are so totally alien to a tropical country like the Philippines. It is the parol  that is so Filipino while celebrating these cool Christmas nights under a clear, starry sky. I hear that there is now a revival of Christmas lantern parades even in San Francisco, California recently sponsored by the Filipino community. Sometimes, it is the Filipinos working overseas, who have such deep longing for a truly Filipino Christmas, that celebrate in a manner where we can witness the popularization of our traditions.

One story I especially like is how these lanterns are placed outside people’s homes, no matter how humble, as symbols that St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary will be welcome in our home and will not need to look for an inn to stay nor give birth to Jesus in a stable.

The parol is the symbol of the Star that the Three Kings followed to bring them to the town of Bethlehem on the night of the birth of Christ. It is said that the splendor of the parol reflects the mood of the people and even the state of the economy.

In one of Jose Rizal’s writings, he used this symbolism to describe a town: “It was Christmas Eve but the town was sad. Not one paper lantern hung from the windows.”

The Belen or the Nativity Scene

The Belen is a tableau depicting the nativity scene. It is shows the infant Jesus in the manger surrounded by St. Joseph, the Virgin Mary, the Three Kings with their gifts, and some shepherds with their flock and several other animals in the stable. The word belen is derived from the Spanish word for Bethlehem.

The belen’s centerpiece is the infant Jesus. I have always felt that this is another Filipino cultural tradition wherein Christmas is really reflected as the time for family gatherings with children as the centerpiece of the celebration. As we watch wars and natural disasters happening all over the world, it is important to remind ourselves that every time a war is fought and a disaster hits, it is the children who are always most affected either physically or psychologically.

I have also always felt that the most joyous part of any Christmas celebration is to see all these festivities through the eyes of a child and to help children everywhere find peace and love.

A Filipino Christmas

A great Filipino nationalist, Claro Mayo Recto, once said: “A firm belief in the genius of our race and in the capacity of their destiny is another basic component of nationalism. But this belief can only be acquired through the understanding of their struggles and accomplishments, their trials and tribulations, the sum total of their experience since the dawn of history.”

While Christmas is now a universal celebration, our own unique traditions in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ tell us that we are not Americans or Europeans or even like other Asians. We are a distinct people with our own culture and spirit; our own customs and traditions; and our own common destiny.

As we celebrate the birth of Christ in our own unique Filipino way, this is one time we can say with pride to the whole world — only in the Philippines.

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