Ang Pasko ay Sasapit

By Carlos A. Arnaldo
Manila
December 20, 2015



After that she went with her parents to a fancy restaurant for her birthday dinner. Of course, it was a fine dinner, but rather unexciting compared to the glee and happiness of 20 orphan girls! “I made 20 kids happy! What a Christmas!”

A Business Entrepreneurship student had a clever idea; shoebox Christmas! Get a shoebox and fill it with goodies for kids of grades 1 to 3. You could put candies, cookies, little notepads, ball pens, some games like a rubix cube, the scrabble game in a bottle, puzzles, children’s books. Just mark for boy or girl, or either. The week before Christmas, she distributes a 122 shoeboxes to  the three grades of a public school in a poor area. This is even fun!

Another student organized a bingo game at a business dinner in a Makati Penthouse to raise funds. At 500 pesos per bingo card, she and her classmates netted 15,000 pesos. She’ll use this to buy foodstuffs to distribute to the squatter families in an adjacent neighborhood.

Think also of those young people in jail, rightly or wrongly convicted, they may be anticipating a horrible Christmas. A brief visit by you with some dinuguan and puto, or pansit bihon, or even chocolate at puto bumbong, bibinka, hamon at keso. It’s not the amount you bring or the fanciness of it. It’s the fact that you visited them that counts. If you are a long term prisoner with no family in the city and no visits, what  a joy to see someone new and be given a nice aguinaldo!

The next time someone asks me, “Anong regalo mo sa akin?” I’ll answer “Anong regalo mo sa mga walang regalo?”

Christmas is giving, not always receiving.