by Dr. Roger B. Rueda
That season when the archipelago is punctured by both cash bonuses and conscience deficits falls on the Philippines is a kind of ironic halo. Christmas in the Philippines is not so much celebrated as performed with the devotion of a Shakespearean tragedy and the consistency of a government alibi. We are, as Gabriel García Márquez might sigh, in a Season of Miraculous Forgetting.
Right now, in some shanty village of the Philippines, a mother is stirring a pot of instant noodles and calling it Noche Buena. She is neither a snob nor an idealist. Pure of heart and simple in spirit, she is, after all, following the example Christ himself set: “Man shall not live by bread alone,” as Matthew (4:4) tells us. But alas, reader, sometimes there is no bread—only boiling water and borrowed faith. And yet, the Department of Trade and Industry—a veritable master of comedy in the guise of public service—has the nerve to say that a ₱500 Noche Buena is all any family of five needs! My goodness! Somewhere a senator is robbing ₱5 billion, a governor hiding ₱50 million in confidential funds, and a mayor “auditing” her conscience with a designer handbag. And there comes DTI to tell the poor to make up low-fat meatloaf or imaginative sardines.
This is not economics; it is theology in drag. The miracle of making do without any money is, in substitution for loaves and fishes, merely survival against shortages all around. So when DTI grins and says, “₱500 will do,” just remember—it is not a budget; it is an obituary for dignity, delivered with press releases, straight faces, the lot!
When poor people sing Christmas carols wading in floodwaters, they are more than just hopeful; they do resilience as the national pastime. They are true disciples of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, finding purpose in suffering while those in power look for a way out. Their parol is not made of capiz but of courage; their nativity scene, persistence, not porcelain. And somewhere in the same archipelago, politicians and high-ranking officials are pocketing billions, grinning like choirboys in congressional hearings. Meanwhile, the Department of Health has left its so-called “mega health centers” halfway through, hardly constructed, so that all they stand as are concrete carcasses to mediocrity. The irony? Poor and sick they may be, yet it’s a sick land that awaits them—“under construction.”
We are told to wait, patiently endure, as if divine mercy were a substitute for good governance.
My friends, this is not faith. This is state-endorsed martyrdom—poverty as policy, resilience as anesthesia, and corruption as the country’s only illness that even the DOH will not admit. Yet somewhere uptown, the officials whose neglect turned this annual Atlantis into Christmas Chaos parasol in their solemn annual handouts, distributed with flood bolts labeled “From your public servant.” They call it charity. We call it crime with ribbons.
For the corrupt Filipino, Christmas is the Fourth Quarter of Damnation. Luke 12:15 warns us, “Take care to guard against every kind of greed, for even though he is rich, the man’s life does not result from all his possessions.” But our political class treats this verse like a footnote that didn’t get it.
In this day and age, they are like modern-day Pontius Pilates, washing their hands with sanitizer after underwriting a bloated contract—even adding that they are Scrooges without redemption. They use spreadsheets to rewrite Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. They throw charity balls where the chandeliers cost more than the donated funds. They even quote that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)—conveniently forgetting that what they give is first from the society’s exchequer.
And when the Commission on Audit appears like the Ghost of Christmas Past, they feign surprise—as if their villas were built by elves, their luxury cars delivered by the Three Kings. Each auditor’s report becomes a morality play in which robbers feign victim, and taxpayers are the laugh of fools. They clutch their pearls, issue statements of “transparency,” and chant the favorite hymn of the guilty: “We welcome any investigation.” Of course—investigations are like novenas in this country: said regularly, seldom answered. So the public watches the game, fully realizing that each thousand pesos hence embezzled is a centimeter widening that one pothole, the next project delayed, another Filipino’s dream being whittled down.
The simple soul, like Thoreau at Walden Pond, spends Christmas in silence. One candle, one petition prayer, one song—this suffices. To him, God dwells not in theatrical splendor but in the simple fact of being alive. He knows that life’s truer meaning, like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, is found not so much in things as in being.
But the ambitious soul—oh, here is rich comedy and laughter! Christmas for them is, as pointed out, a PR campaign veiled in piety. They post “gratitude reflections” on Facebook with all the sincerity of a corporate press release and attend Simbang Gabi not for the novena but to be photographed. They are the epitome of Kierkegaard’s “aesthetic stage”: living in irony and excelling in profundity, sinking deeply into superfluousness.
But in the midst of contradictions, something sacred still flickers. The poor who share their last can of sardines. The nurse who works through Christmas Eve. The teacher who buys her own chalk. These are the real Magi of our age—bearing gifts of endurance. But they do not, in display, come on camels. With hands frozen from empty electricity bills, they do not follow a star but rather the faint light of unpaid bills. Every day, in the ruins of false promises and half-built hospitals, these ordinary citizens perform miracles—resurrecting hope with nothing but faith and the hard-scrabble obstinacy of the Filipino people itself. If holiness were assessed not by wealth but by sacrifice, then the nation’s saints are not in the Senate but in the slums; not in the Cabinet but on our streets, in schools and hospitals, in wet markets where piety has not yet died completely. If Christ were born today in Baseco, not Bethlehem, his manger would be a cardboard box under some bridge somewhere. The shepherds would be security guards; the wise men, Grab drivers held up by traffic. And King Herod would have his own vlog entitled “The Truth Behind the Nativity Scam.”
In the words of Dostoyevsky, “You can judge the culture of a society by going into its prisons.” But here, you don’t even need to go inside one of those bars. Just look at any Christmas party—and then see who gets their place where it says “Reserved.” A man convicted of pillaging the public purse is now the guest of honor. Perfectly healthy architects of overpriced projects are leading prayers. Those same hands which signed ghost contracts now raise glasses of merlot to “public service.” Civilization, it seems, has degenerated into this. In this republic, which has no recall, the corrupt one struts pompously upon history’s stage in sequined gowns and tells us about “nation-building.” As waiters serve lechon to lawmakers with cholesterol in their consciences, the rest of the country watches from twisted television screens. They ask not for justice but only for any crumbs that might be left over. So, before we cry out “Merry Christmas!” let us remember the Lord’s thunder in Isaiah 1:23: “Your rulers are rebels, partners of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts.” But this same passage also offers hope: “Come now, let us reason together… Though your sins are as scarlet, they will become white as snow.”
The miracle of Christmas, my
friends, is not in shopping plazas nor in the palaces of public officials but
in the innocence and laughter when uncorrupt hearts gather lighted candles,
perhaps even music! It is also among poor people who get nothing but still find
ways to contribute to others. The powerful may feast themselves on tricks, but
the humble already dine in grace.
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