The Yuletide celebration on the Philippines has been said to be the longest celebration of both the Christmas and New Year because right at the start of the ber months, Christmas songs and carols are heard in the air to bring joy and happiness to the people, even those living in the remotest parts of the archipelago. People from different parts of the world celebrate the Yuletide season in their own unique way More importantly, what should be alive in our midst should be the values of charity, peace, humility and love.
It is because of the love of the Almighty Father that he gave up his only begotten Son to save the world from the sins of the people. It was only the Lord that can do that. In the real world, people simply memorize and recite biblical verses in their speeches to show their concern for the people that they work with but in actuality, they do not actually practice the love for mankind because what they practice is for the protection of the whims and caprices of their friends, classmates, acquaintances and people who are only known to them. Actually, the pictorials of politicians mingling with the poor families in their areas of jurisdiction is a sign of being great pretenders so that people will appreciate their half-hearted efforts to serve their constituents. Surely, that is not the way to show real love for the people. It simply sows that politicians simply want to project their image at the expense of the poor.
Another core value supposedly being practiced by the people not only during the Yuletide season but everyday is charity. Charity comes from the heart and not from anything else. If one is interested to give someone a gift for Christmas, it must be given wholeheartedly and not taken from others. I has been time and again sated that it is better to give than to receive but what is happening right now is it is best to receive and receive and give away to the others what had been demanded from others. It is now up to the people to be circumspect about what is happening in their surroundings so that they will be able to comprehend whether the people giving gifts to them during the Yuletide celebration are really giving them for charity purposes and not for other hidden purposes or it came from hard earned money and not from purely solicitations.
Peace is also one of the essential aspects of the Yuletide season. Our activities for the Christmas and New Year is supposedly winning back people by starting right in ourselves. While we were able to lose people in the course of our practice of our duties and responsibilities, the Yuletide season serves as a venue to reflect on what had happened in the past, admit our shortcomings, reflect on what had happened and try to reach out to those people
whom you have either hurt or maligned and start making up for lost ground. Let us try to bring back the vibrance of our relationships with others whom we were able to lose track on our way to success. Let us win them back by trying to make peace with them and let them decide on whether or not to accept your offer for reconciliation. We should learn to swallow our pride because it will bring us nowhere.
Humility is also a very important virtue that should prevail on us in our everyday lives. Time and again, many people keep saying that they practice humility over authority but it is actually a total reversal of sorts. Humility is not only preached and pronounced to the world but it is actually internalized and made part of the core values of people. It is so disappointing to hear people publicly announce that they adhere to humility over authority when they even cannot discipline their erring friends, classmates, subordinates who are trying to lord
it over things that happen in our daily lives among other related issues. We had been strongly advocating for people to walk the talk and not be talkative about things because what we need is consistent action aand not plain and simple favouritism.
The celebration of this year’s yuletide season should serve as a wakeup call for everyone to reflect on the good deeds and words of the lightly Father. Let us not interpret the very important virtues to our own favour but instead, let us learn to sincerely and responsibly practice them because they had been proven virtues of good people. We really need an evangelical revolution for our true virtues to be given the acid test because many of us simply discuss the same in public but when they go to their private lives, they are actually doing the reverse. Let us be brave enough in facing the realities of life and not be blinded by our whims and caprices just to make it appear that we are good in public bu we are actually doing the reverse to the greater disadvantage of the people around us. We have known people to have risen and drastically fallen because of their pretentious act and we do not want the same to happen to the present generation. We want today’s youth to emulate the good virtues and not be swayed by great pretenders.
