How to celebrate a Filipino Christmas
It’s two days before the Filipinos’ favorite holiday of the year… CHRISTMAS - PASKO!
In our culture, this 3-month event is a big huge thing!
Yep, it starts in September, way before the air gets cold. Christmas lights, lanterns (parols), and decors are up. Christmas songs rock the radio and mall stores.
It doesn’t end until the Three Kings get celebrated, come mid-January.
So, even if it’s only two days to Christmas, you’re not too late to catch up and get into the spirit of a PINOY CHRISTMAS.
Here’s how to celebrate Pasko, the traditional Filipino Christmas:
- Put up a Filipino Christmas “tree“.
- Play Christmas tunes like “Pasko na naman” and “Pasko na sinta ko“.
- Attend the “Misa de Gallo” - midnight masses that began on December 16.
- (After church) buy Christmas foods like puto bumbong, bibingka, suman and hot ginger tea (salabat).
- Display your Christmas parols, star-shaped lanterns made from colored chinese paper, capiz shells and brightened with either candles or lights.
- Expect “cumbancheros,” or carolers, to visit your house with musical instruments to serenade you and your neighbors.
- Watch the “Panunuluyan” in the town plaza on Christmas Eve. This is a re-enactment of the Holy Couple’s journey to Bethlehem and portrays the lack of hospitality they encountered along the way.
- Gather with friends and relatives for “Noche Buena” after the Mass ends. Serve pandesal, queso de bola, home-made hot tsokolate and “mansanas na marami”. This is a festive meal followed by the exchange of gifts, which lasts through the next morning.
- Arrange to visit family and friends on Christmas Day. Be ready with your new and crisp peso bills, to give out to children as their aginaldos.
- Celebrate the NEw Year with a bang, and don’t get out of your Christmas spirit until mid-January, when we celebrate the Three Kings.
HOW DO YOU CELEBRATE YOUR CHRISTMAS?
Tags: christmas, tradition, filipino, pinoy, pasko, celebrate, how to, misa de gallo, aginaldo
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POSTED IN: General: Philippine Culture, Home and Family
December 28th, 2007 at 3:04 am
that is so OLD PINOY Christmas… Filipinos, especially the children, don’t do those stuff anymore, unless probably you live in the province or you haven’t been to malls. Pinoys would rather go to SM than attend misa de gallo. No one drinks salabat anymore, the drink of the season is either San Miguel beer or Fundador (for the more opulent ones). No one eats pandesal and queso de bola anymore, they’d rather eat sliced loaf bread and cheez whiz. That quezo de bola thing is so hard and salty, children won’t eat it. And parols with candles? Who does that? What a stupid fire hazard idea.
Anyway, nice post… Happy New Year. Keep on blogging! Mabuhay ang Pinoy bloggers!