It may be corny and cliché, but as one grows older, we start to realize that Christmas is truly in our hearts.
For me, there was the realization that this could possibly be the last Christmas my little nuclear family of four will spend together, physically and face-to-face, as our firstborn is already living a first world life in a university abroad.
We are still complete this year because when we got him airline tickets for the start of the school year, round trip ones were cheaper than one way, and when found out that their winter break gives him time to be home for Christmas, we decided to kill two birds with one stone by getting him a round trip ticket. That means we “saved” money and get to be together for the holidays.
Since we didn’t know what his life would be like in Japan, it seemed like a smart move to get the round trip ticket. While there is no chance that “Pasko na sinta ko” will start playing on the radio and make him super homesick, but we were worried that it could hit him, so sending him home for Christmas made sense.
What is surprising is that the adjustment to Japan life has been so smooth that it seems like he wouldn’t mind not going home for Christmas anymore, and went home this year only because the ticket was already bought and paid for. It looks like as parents, we will have to brace ourselves for the possibility of not being a complete family at home next Christmas… and that is one sobering thought that hit me as I was writing this column, hence its title.
Another sobering Christmas realization was how families grow, age, and drift apart as time goes by. In our case we have our child who is now fully spreading his wings. But recently, my extended family also had a gathering to celebrate the birthday of the person who it turns out, was the matriarchal glue that held us all together. DAILY STAR founder and stalwart Tita Ninfa Leonardia would’ve been 91 on December 19, and as the family gathered to celebrate her birthday, we realized that unlike before when the 19th meant the start of a series of parties that went on until New Year’s, that was going to be our Christmas gathering because we all had grown up and booked our own family and in-law get-togethers.
Time (and stomach space) is a finite resource during Christmas, and we have to choose who to spend it with. When Tita Ninfa was still around, such was her gravity that it meant that we had to make time for her, which meant compromises in scheduling, but we generally made it work.
In our case back then, when the kids were younger and more people were still with us, Christmas Eve was for my father’s side of my family, lunch was at my mother’s ancestral home, the afternoon spent at the airport, and dinner was in Mandaluyong with the in-laws.
The pandemic and growing up/old messed up that super busy Christmas schedule, and if you come to think of it, while the bright side is that we are no longer as busy now, it also means that we must’ve lost some of the people who deserved our Christmas attention. And maybe that is why we celebrate Christmas in our hearts, because that is the only way we can spend it with those people who could be thousands of kilometers away, or no longer in the same physical realm, because such is life.
Life is constant change, and this Christmas season, I’m feeling it more in traditions where some things stay the same, but some things don’t. The fruit salad could be a constant, but the people we eat it with rarely stay the same for too long. Loved ones either grow up, move on, or pass away, and new younglings come in every now and then. What can make it stay the same for as long as it can, or hold everything together, would probably be the will of the clan patriarch or matriarch, but even those awesome people can only do so much.
So, as we celebrate these holidays with the people we want or choose to be with during special moments, those of us who are growing older and more sentimental we will also have to start keeping those moments in our hearts, in preparation for the time when some gatherings no longer have the luxury of complete togetherness. Because as we all have seen as the years go by and time marches on, people will come and go into our lives, and those who stay on are the ones that we choose to keep in our hearts, regardless of where they end up as they go about their own lives.
Let’s cherish the holidays as we spend it with the important people in our lives, because they are the ones that give meaning to everything we do and keep in our hearts.
Merry Christmas to one and all.*
