When Christmas lost a spark…

(Christmas Colors ----> Advertisement. Wala ni labot sa post.... Hehe)
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While scanning my blog, I stumbled upon this unpublished post which I wrote last year. I did not find the ample of time to finish this, that is why, it was not published. While reading this blog entry, I cannot help but laugh. It reminded me of my senseless emotes last year's Christmas season.

But as what most people say, the only thing constant in life is change. Everything changes and so, my mind does, too. This season, I’m taking back everything that I said in this manuscript:

“I can’t definitely recall when that spark about Christmas faded from my eyes. All I can remember is that we still had a great Christmas celebration last year…

The countdown of my online blog was telling me that the Holiday celebrated by most people in this side of the universe is coming. While writing this, it reads that it is exactly five more weeks, four days, seven hours, and twenty minutes to go before the event. I cannot help but heave a deep sigh knowing that Christmas is here. Even things around me tell that it is indeed here --- the flickering Christmas lights, the Christmas songs and carols playing, and well, the coldness of the air engulfing the atmosphere. Christmas is indeed on the air now --- everyone and everything is telling it.

But while most people in this world get excited about it and get thrilled with every implication about Christmas --- everything is nothing to my eyes now. Though the lights still flickered, the songs are still sweet, and the air is still cold, a thought about Christmas is already nothing to me. It had already lost a spark in me.

As a little boy, I grow anticipating Christmas every year. It is once the most anticipated day I looked forward every year. Though we do not celebrate it in the family in the fabulous and expensive way, we used to celebrate it with meanings. I can’t remember a Christmas day in the past that was wasted --- in whatever way, the whole family would spend it in full essence.

Every moment and every scenario how we celebrated Christmas in the past remained vivid to my memory even now. Mama, Ate, and I would always find ourselves busy in the kitchen before Noche Buena. Being the self-proclaimed chef at home, I would always be assigned in preparing macaroni salad, spaghetti, and ham. Mama on the other hand would boast her ‘walang kamatayang’ biko, maja blanca, and tinolang manok in the kitchen while Ate would lead Papa and my younger brothers in setting up a grill outside our house for her pork barbeque. After the food preparations, since there is no simbang gabi in our barrio, we would stay together in our little living room where we would wait for Noche Buena by having a videoke. We were not born singers but we would wait for the very event with shrilling voices. At exactly twelve in the midnight, the whole family would offer a little prayer and then would go together and eat the food we prepared earlier.

These things are maybe simple but seeing my family complete always complete my Christmas. The Christmas lights that flickered in our house and the sweet Christmas songs played while we merrily…”

This time, I’m back to my childhood perspectives and anticipations about the Christmas season. This year, I’m excited again to celebrate a merry Christmas at home…

(Some pics of our Christmas celebration last year - the first Christmas without Papa...)