Christmas Message 2006

17 December 2006, Manhattan -This year I will spend Christmas in New York, away from my family. It is a first among many firsts for this year. Although I have been here 6 years next month, I have always made it a point to go home to Manila for the holidays. Well, except in 2001 when my then 17 year old Nicole made her first international travel on her own – one of many she would make years later.

It is also the first time I have dressed up my apartment for the holidays. A giant fresh wreath of balsam fir hangs in the apartment and fills it with its sweet scent. A drapery of tiny lighted stars runs the length of my two 6-foot tall windows. Two pots of bright red poinsettias sit on the table next to my couch surrounded by the cards I have received from family and friends. And on my dining table, a work in progress – presents wrapped and ready for the giving sit in a pile next to rolled wrappers, ribbons, bows and the transparent tape dispenser.

It is also the first time I celebrated Hanukkah. A light blue ceramic menorah sits on the window sill just where the lighted stars end their journey from the top of the glass windows. Last Friday night, we kindled the first candles and said the traditional prayers.

My world, I realize, broadened not just in the spatial sense I have placed myself away from my family but in my acceptance of the vastness of ways a special day can be celebrated. It transcends religion, faith, culture or tradition. Christmas all over the world becomes meaningful to everyone because it becomes a chance to pause in our lives and to acknowledge the people we love and the blessings we have received or the challenges we had battled. Calendar'd so conveniently a week before the end of the Roman year, it allows us to look back to the year that was and to allow some reflection before moving on to the new year.

Unlike being home in the Philippines, not everyone in my New York circle is Catholic. Jewish, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Muslims and I even have atheists among us. We celebrate, we greet each other and perhaps at times when it had not been easy to say, the season makes it convenient – we say how much we care for each other. But yes, saying ‘I love you’ comes quite easy in a season and it is with sincerity, with commitment. ‘I’m sorry if I messed up sometimes’, makes it even more meaningful among friends.

Yet again, another realization – when you are bound together by involuntary solitude, away from families who are many miles away, you create among you a new family. Brothers and sisters who readily lends a shoulder when the tears come easy, share joy to celebrate milestones, share secrets and who will even roughen you up ‘just because it is fun’ sometimes. But most of all there is a very genuine respect for one another and concern but one that does not cross lines, never meddling in each other's lives. It is the people who you do not associate by blood but who you know you will take the bullet for without a second thought.

My extended family in New York is quite a big group considering that the spouses of my girlfriends can chill with my boyfriend in a 'boys night out', that the mom of one would cook pancit or make ensaimada for me only because I had mentioned that I was craving for it or a girlfriend would volunteer to go with me to my next check-up at the first mention of a health problem. Not related by blood but linked by a bond that is quite difficult to explain. We look after each other because away from our own families, we have only each other. We become our family.

Christmas for me always meant waiting up for midnight, enjoying the feast of the Noche Buena and then watching the kids tear through their presents. They will continue with the tradition at home and I will probably spend much of Christmas morning on the telephone getting a recap of their celebrations and Gabbie and Liam’s newest antics. I am comforted that I will be home in mid-January and will have a late Christmas celebration with my favorite niece and nephew. And in turn, I will get the greatest gift of all – my daughter is graduating from college.

No Noche Buena for me but Christmas day lunch was booked with friends in a favorite Italian restaurant on the West Side. I am expecting a quiet Christmas in New York with no karaoke singing by my neighbors (thank you, God). New Year’s will be fireworks and asthma-free (nope, I doubt if I will adventure to join the throngs of humanity who will be at Times Square). Yet the season is not all lost - everything is how you perceive it. With so much love from people who are close by and the real family who are back home, it validates the meaning of the Season of Love.



From my family in the Philippines and my daughter Nicole and I, we wish you all a very special and happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year’s.

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