I ask the question because aside from the irritating Christmas carols you hear just about everywhere, I have not begun to feel the Christmas spirit. But what is Christmas at this day and age? It is a time to be flat broke and ensure your employers you will be bright and early to work the following year. You got bills to pay, that is why.
Christmas has a strange way of creeping up on me. It takes me a while to warm up to Christmas but when it hits, it hits hard. Last year, I wasn’t really into it until I had dinner with the family on Christmas eve. My brother was born a day before Christmas so it was a birthday celebration rather than the noche buena, as noche buena is for Christmas eve. Sitting at the dinner table, feeling satisfied, engaged in fun discussions with the family, I remembered Christmases past. There was the wet Christmas, the Christmas we thought we would have no gifts from Santa (my parents were trying very hard to make ends meet), the Christmas Dad had to work, the first Christmas away from Cebu, the Christmas we didn’t celebrate with relatives, the Christmas at our home right now, and that Christmas - my last Christmas at the parents’ house. I was awash with emotion. No matter what each of us faced, we still are intact as a family and we still come together to make Christmas a family affair.
It is not really the gifts you put under the tree, but the feeling that you have for the people you love and who matter most to you… not just for one day or season, but for always.
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19 - the number of times the word Christmas appears in this post.
Let me know if you think I miscounted. 
