Filipino Christmas tradition: Aginaldos
In my Bataan side of the family, Christmas presents are not a big thing.
Aginaldos are!!!
On Christmas day, everyone wakes up early to cook ga-bundles of food at my grandparent’s house in Bataan. There would be an abundance of Christmas dishes on the 12-seater table. We get to dress in our finest Christmas outfit and eagerly wait for the guests to come. No, us kids aren’t being benevolent… we’re waiting for guests to come… to give us our aginaldos!
Aginaldo is the Filipino tradition of asking for blessings from an elder’s hand, be it the uncle, aunt, grandparents, some distant relatives. Whoever they are that come into the house. They’re there to celebrate the season with us.
And us kids are there to wait for our cash-gifts. Yup.
Christmas presents are not a big thing. Cash-gifts are. Ka-ching!
By the end of the day, the cousins count their “blessings”, and sometimes we get hundreds of pesos, enough to buy us what we really want for Christmas.
:-)
Here’s to a prosperous celebration of your Filipino Christmas traditions.
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Tags: christmas, filipino, tradition, aginaldo, blessing, gifts, pinoy
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POSTED IN: General: Philippine Culture, Home and Family
April 26th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
please enumerate all tha filipino traditions…
thnx^^