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Who prepares holiday tables laden with favorite
dishes and sweets for an endless stream of  visiting
relatives and friends? Who stuffs gift baskets to
overflowing with goodies such as fruitcakes, cheeses,
cookies, bottled salted fish, pasta noodles and sauces,
gourmet vinegars, olive oils, wines, and champagnes? Who
draws up the gift list with such enthusiasm and good cheer
that it included the postman, the security guard, the
manicurist, the newspaper boy, the fruit vendor, the
fishmonger, the teacher, the parish priest, and even the
bill collector?
These unique traditions are, in themselves, forms of
“art” that shape the way we mark our Christmas season
– Pinoy style.
The story of Christmas in the Philippines began
centuries ago, when Spanish conquistadors landed on
our shores in 1521. soon enough, the friars who came with
them, full of missionary zeal, christianized the natives.
But it was only in 1525, during the rule of conquistador
Miguel Lopez de Legaspi that the Feast of the Nativity was
officially celebrated. A historical account narrates that,
sometime in the early 14th century, the
Franciscan priest Odoric from Italy celebrated the first
Christmas Mass along the shores of Lingayen, Pangasinan. The
feast of Christmas was easily assimilated by the
newly-converted natives, as the yuletide season coincided
with their annual harvest time when thanksgiving was offered
to their gods and ancestors. The result was a melding of
Catholic beliefs with indigenous rituals.
Today, as Paskong Pinoy tradition has it,
Christmas is in the air the minute the first “ber” month
(September) arrives. Displays of Christmas Cards, tree
ornaments, and lights suddenly spring up in retail outlets
in record bars, shopping malls, restaurants, and even
jeepneys careening along the streets. Christmas bazaars
offering every kind of merchandise imaginable become
standard weekend destinations. This goes on, with increasing
fervor and insistence, through October and November.
Finally, December arrives! Old community rituals come
alive, such as the singing of vilancicos 
(hymns), the
visits of carolers going from house to house, and street
plays depicting scenes from the Nativity story. In both
rural and urban areas, Christmas parols (lanterns)
adorn windows of houses, shop displays, and lampposts along
major thoroughfares; and appear in an explosion of blinking,
pulsating, and revolving colors in street side stalls.
Only then does the Church-prescribed Christmas
liturgical season begin. It lasts 22 days, beginning on
December 16 with the first dawn Mass – also called Simbang
Gabi – and ending of the “Feast of the Three
Kings” in January.
Within this month-long period, the Filipino penchant
for fiesta comes to the fore. Rural barrios come alive with
processions and parades, perfect excuses for decking the
whole town in lights and Christmas trimming, and dressing up
in one’s finery. One favorite procession, called the Panunuluyan,
reenacts the search of Mary and Joseph for lodging in
Bethlehem. This, like most Philippine folk traditions,
thinks nothing of combining the religious with the
patriotic, and exercising poetic license with Biblical
stories and characters for the mere spectacle and enjoyment
of it.
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