Spending Christmas with OFWs in the USA

There's no place like home in Christmas. Home is where the loved ones are. It is the place where we get our strength, our inspiration and our very reason for working very hard. That is why we make sure that we come home a few days before Yuletide. But since our friends in the West Coast insist that we celebrate this special holiday together before our flight home, we did had party on the fifteenth, just a few hours before we flew back from Seattle. But we made it a different kind of party. It was more of a spiritual get-together, family affair with many close friends and relatives, simultaneous with a sort of birthday celebration for my wife. And, true to my reputation (''kono'') as an inspirational speaker, they made me ''lecture'' on ''how to balance career with family.'' That was my Christmas gift to them.

First, of all I told them of my credo in life: " There is no success in career that can make up for any failure in the family." One can be an outstanding professional, a rich businessman or a well-recognized and well-paid contract worker, but if he fails as a husband, as a wife, as a parent or as a son or daughter, his success would be an empty one. A Filipino would always yearn for family. It is from the family that he finds comfort and confidence. It is from loved ones that he feels secure and protected and loved. He or she may be bullied at work or discriminated upon and ignored. But if he has a strong family support, he will survive. And if he can make it here in the US, believe me, he can really make it anywhere.

Secondly, I told them that it is easier to change careers or shift to another line of work but is extremely traumatic and heart-breaking to have a divorce or a broken home. Many Filipinos have committed suicide or murder because of family problems. Some kids are turning to drugs, to gambling, and alcohol, or to promiscuity or to petty crimes because they have fathers who are successful at work but failures at home. There are good husbands who have become philanderers or wives who turn cheaters not because they do not love their spouses any more but because their partners have forgotten to show them genuine love and affection at home. And so, I admonished our working Filipinos in the US to put God in the center of their lives and their families as their first priority.

Third, I told them that there's nothing wrong to have two families: their spouses and children as the first family and their parents and siblings as the second family. In fact, they can have a third family, the Filipino community of friends at work, in church or in the neighborhood. The parents left here are never forgotten especially during Christmas time. That is why the money remittance business is booming because the Filipinos always send home the dollars, not just the bacon, or the'' balikbayan'' boxes full of chocolates, canned goods, clothing and toys for the children, victims of Yolanda or not. The Filipinos are really family men first, over and above job or country. And they are generous givers. They work over time even on holidays. They get extra jobs, even if bordering at illegal work, as long as they have money to send home.

Fourth, I encourage them to continue nurturing the family as the solid foundation of our society, and to preserve and promote the Filipino culture of being religious, to respect the elders, to help family members in distress, and to practice ''bayanihan.'' I ask them to turn around any negative image arising from such common belief of '' crab mentality'' or ''bahala na'' philosophy or '' ningas cogon'' attitude. I told them that the real Filipino is one who has ''palabra de honor'', or has a delicate sense of ''delicadeza'' and ''hiya.'' The one that they like most is when I said PILIPIMO, ''pili na lipi'' na ''pino'' ang ugali. And so, we had music, stories, games for the kids, sing-along, and a lot of foods. My cousins and friends drove all the way from San Diego, Las Vegas, and many from Vancouver. There were some who flew in from New York, Chicago and Florida.

We all met in Seattle in the house of my brother Jonathan and we went to see the whole city atop the Space Needle Tower, and also saw the first ever Starbucks, as well as the restaurant where they filmed "Sleepless in Seattle''. We visited the kingdom of Bill Gates and the home of Booeing. We climbed up to Mt Rainier and shopped in Bellevue, even drove to Portland, Oregon just for bonding, and then we took pictures and posted them in the Facebook. But at the end of the day, we always go home to the family. Careers and parties come and go. What matters most is where we have real joy and genuine happiness at home with the family. We work to the bones, struggle our way in different countries and cultures; we get hurt and feel depressed. But when we have our family, everything is going well and about. That, perhaps, is the real meaning of Christmas.