A Different Christmas

Coming home to my Holy Spirit family (Holy Spirit Chapel, SVD Compound, Tagaytay; 2017)

This Christmas season is a lot more simple and laid back than what has become my Christmas routine throughout my adult life so far. There are less Christmas parties and get togethers. Traditional gift giving is trimmed down partly because of financial constraints but mainly because of the commitment to espouse a minimalist, conscious lifestyle. I prefer not to receive gifts I won't have use for and therefore also avoid giving loved ones something that will only add to their own clutter. I am very conscious of how useful and meaningful the gifts I'd give. I refuse to operate in the usual just-to-be-able-to-give-something mentality. And to those I am unable to give material gifts, I give spiritual gifts even without them knowing it.

This year, I only met one group of friends for Christmas get together. Time constraints made it challenging to schedule a meet-up with a few more friends I'd like to spend time with. The preparations for relocating for my new job in January and a work engagement that's both personally and professionally fulfilling as well as filling for my almost empty pockets changed my calendar in a snap toward the last week of November.

While I'm a little guilty for having to forego meeting other sets of friends, in general, I am at peace, knowing that true friends understand and finding the space for things that need to be done. There's also a sense of quiet joy in seeing myself being brave enough to have a more conscious and purposive Christmas.

As I attended the last day of Simbang Gabi (dawn mass), I felt like that simple girl again whose Christmas joy was being able to complete the Christmas novena masses. My heart felt the delight of the child in me whose joy was to be able to get up at 3:00 to attend the dawn mass at 4:00.  While Simbang Gabi is now more convenient at 18:00 hours, the long to-do list makes attending the daily masses a bit prohibitive. Still, my commitment to do it, which meant cutting down on visits to the big city and being extra mindful of my priorities, prevailed. It may seem limiting but in reality  there's a sense of freedom in being able to choose to do something that my heart desires. There's a sense of joy in being part of a community that is celebrating dawn masses again for the first time after several years of lull and grudges among some members of the community  (and this time in our newly constructed chapel). There's a sense of peace to be able to stop at the end of a busy day to listen to and reflect on the yeses of the key figures in the Christmas story. The homilies may be far from what I consider good ones, but with the effort to have an open mind and heart, I still managed to come home with a little learning and, on better days, some gems for further reflection. To some extent, the exercise was like returning, as a new and more mature person, to my Catholic faith and traditions. As I prepare to relocate to my duty station in Mindanao, attending the Simbang Gabi was also some kind of ritual of entrusting my loved ones to God, whose symbolic residence in this community is just next door to my house.

Finding the Jackson Five's Christmas album on Spotify a few days before Christmas was like being a little child finding treasured gifts underneath the Christmas tree. It was like being transported to decades ago with all the memories of my childhood Christmas, it was like being home again after many years of absence. "Christmas is Coming Home," goes the title of a recent post in Pins of Light, a blog I follow. In my case, it's coming home to my sacred space (and to my renewed relationship with my God), to my Catholic faith and traditions, and to my community.