Christmas cheers

CHRISTMAS is once again here and we surely are going to celebrate it.

The season may not be as merry as we hope it to be, especially for the thousands of families who were rendered vulnerable having lost loved ones, their homes, and livelihood in the recent floods that hit the country. Pangasinan was one of the worst hit provinces and many Pangasinenses are still grasping at straws in order to rebuild their lives. Prices of commodities have also unavoidably gone up as a consequence of the damages to food production and infrastructure.

But leave it to the Filipino’s resilience and optimism to find something to be joyful about in the littlest things.

And Christmas, after all, is not about material richness. If we scrape through the parties and frills that have become part of our yearly celebration, we will easily re-discover that as an occasion to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ in the Catholic tradition, Christmas is actually a celebration of new life, hope, and family — priceless values that we Filipinos definitely hold dear.

We do know how to count our blessings, and in doing so we find strength in overcoming our losses.

But our Christmas cheer should not be equated to a simple resignation to how things are. It must be a proactive kind of optimism wherein we feel that are not helpless in demanding, expecting, and working for improvements in the future.

We have seen one of the worst calamities in the province this year, we remember that this Christmas if only to empower us in making sure that we will be better prepared and that our government officials, our public servants, will be leading us on this. We mourn for the victims of the disaster as much as we stand up for ourselves, for us who survived.

With elections coming up in May next year, we can expect our politicians to go the extra mile in taking advantage of the Christmas season to reach out to their constituents. Some would surely have the purest of intentions, others would no doubt be just advancing their own interests. And so we should be cautious about the bounties and promises and goodwill that will be coming from them. We must be able to look beyond the bags of goods, wrapped gifts, and merry greetings.

A meaningful and blessed Christmas to all from us here at The Sunday PUNCH.

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