Patrick Tan

It's my 24th year to celebrate Christmas. Through the years as we grow old, as some would observe, the magic of Christmas is slowly fading. I began to wonder why is this so. And I looked in my life. I haven't yet totally given up on the Christmas spirit, because there's still inner child within me that hopes for the Christmas the way we did before. I think there are a couple of reasons why the spirit of Christmas seem to fade.

I think that relation to time has changed, not time itself. As we grow old, we grow worries and responsibilities. Though being responsible is good, we lose vision why we are doing it. I think it's good to be a Peter Pan sometime, the boy who didn't grow old. Our relationships stay the same, but as we grow old they are slowly worn out, unless carefully tended. I also noticed that through a decade ago we're the longest Christmas celebrating nation in the world, I beg to differ in this time. Christmas is does not come now as early as September, and not as late as February. Has the average Filipino lose hope, the drive to look on the good future in the midst of uncertainty? Is this how a teenage family celebrate Christmas? The shouts of children gone, now replaced with apathy and cynicism. My dream of Christmas, more than any other time of the year, is when I am surrounded with people I love, their importance to me and the realization of it all. My prayer is that my kids would celebrate Christmas in its wondrous and amazing purpose.

I dare to ask, where does Jesus Christ come to play in His divine yet utterly humanized and commercialized season. I feel that Christians sanitize Christmas too much. We take out the reds and the greens of Christmas which translates our efforts to celebrate it rather than popularize it. On the other hand, we must not also neglect the true spirit of Christmas, the remembrance of that day when the Man who opened doors for a God-damned people. I begin to reflect the true heart of Christmas and the question if it is still true in my heart in it's total purity and purest value - His grace, His presence and His work in my life.