It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We Filipinos start hyping Christmas in August.


Every year I hear someone comment on how early we start playing Christmas songs on the radio compared to the previous year. It's accepted custom to start the Christmas season in September (the "ber" months), but this year I've heard Christmas songs as early as July, but played in earnest in late August.

This is my theory: August begins the pre-season hype. It picks up in September, when some buildings start displaying Christmas decor. In some cases, they just start turning on the lights they never bothered to take down from the past season. There will be some booths in supermarkets and department stores with Christmas-themed products. It dies down a bit in October, but October presents what I think is the eeriest juxtaposition: Snowmen and Santa Clause side-by-side with jack o' lanterns and ghosts. Halloween and Christmas together, nobody even notices how weird it gets in the city.


After All Soul's day the holiday festiveness picks up, leading to the month-long happy mess that is December. The seasonal celebrations continue through January (Three Kings' Day), and just kind of drifts away - because of the laziness in taking down decorations. My neighbor never bothered to take down the Santa's sled and reindeer lights at the side of their house just across ours.

What does this all mean? I love Christmas. I can't remember a single Christmas season when I wasn't happy or I didn't enjoy myself. Although every year there's less of us relatives due to the diaspora to Canada, just being together is good. Also, I have a new and much bigger family to celebrate with so it's not so bad.


Earlier we had a staff meeting planning our Christmas party. It's so much less about Jesus, but more of just the general fun and good cheer that the season brings. Soon the ads will come laying the guilt thick on how we all forget what Christmas is really about. I think the guilt is pointless. Nobody forgets Jesus on his birthday anyway. But from the tail end of August until then, we can all just have fun looking forward to having fun.