Christmas is the perfect time for healing

It’s exactly nine days till Christmas day and we’ve been experiencing holiday traffic all over Metro Manila since December began.

I made the mistake of confirming attendance to a friend’s Christmas party in Makati two Fridays ago, and it took me two and a half hours to get there from Ortigas center.

MMDA has reported that this month, there is an average of 500,000 vehicles traversing EDSA. That’s way up compared to the 350,000 average on regular days.

MMDA reported that there are 29 malls along EDSA and so, it isn’t surprising that traffic is almost at a standstill.

MMDA has even asked mall management to adjust opening hours to 11 a.m. instead of 10 a.m. to help ease traffic and closing hours to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 12 midnight on weekends. But even with all these adjustments, traffic is still horrendous!

And it is because of the traffic that I have become somewhat anti-social. I carefully choose the Christmas get-togethers I attend and completely avoid weekday dinner gatherings because I have to wake up at 4 a.m. to do my weekday NET25 TV/radio show from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Not to mention if I say yes to all the Christmas gatherings I am invited to, I will probably be the female version of Santa Claus minus the beard! But seriously, now that I am nearing 60 years old, I have to watch what I eat. And we all know that the food served at these parties is too rich and tempting not to have.

And so, to avoid a heart attack or high blood pressure, I try to be more discerning about the parties I attend and the food I eat.

Instead, I prefer to stay home and wrap my gifts for family and friends. I ordered my personalized gifts as early as October but only got around to wrapping them in the past few days. And as I’ve done in the past, I put up our home’s Christmas tree during the Nov. 1 and 2 long weekend.

This year, I scaled down the decorations a bit, just putting up the tree and the belen so that the house feels less cluttered. I decided to donate some of my ornaments while I was renovating my unit early this year, and it’s amazing how much space was created in the many plastic bins they were stored in after I gave the decor away.

For three years now, I’ve kept the same color theme for the tree — pink and white — much to the dismay of my son Paolo, who thought that we would have a more traditional color scheme this year. But my daughter Gabbie and I love our pink Christmas tree… it’s dainty, feminine, whimsical and quite lovely.

And since this is its third year, I was able to buy pink accessories that went on sale after Christmas 2022 and 2023. Aside from various sizes of Christmas balls, I added silk flowers, stuffed toys, Christmas socks, frames and stars. Of course, I did not scrimp on the lights that went around the tree. If I am not mistaken, I used 16 boxes (100 bulbs per box) of lights.

The rule I follow is to have at least one box of lights for every foot of tree. And since my tree is eight feet tall, I doubled the quantity. I highly recommend using the warm LED lights to give your trees a softer, more subtle glow.

LED lights are more expensive but they last longer and are definitely safer. I’ve been using mine for at least five years now and I just had to buy a few boxes to replace the lights that no longer work.

Christmas is really my favorite time of the year because people are in a festive mood, more forgiving, and definitely more generous. The true essence of Christmas is not the giving of gifts or attending parties. It is a time of reflection to count our blessings and to spread more love and cheer because we are so blessed.

For me, it is the perfect time for healing, to forgive those who have wronged us or make amends with those we’ve hurt. Maybe that’s why Christmas comes just a week before the New Year, so we can welcome the new year with the renewed hope of better and stronger relationships to come.

From my family to yours, have a joyous and magical Christmas!