I was up by 3 am. I took a shower, got a jacket and waited for my dad in the sala with a cup of hot chocolate in my hand. Sip after sip, I would look at the calendar and count the days: nine more to go. With one last gulp, I stood up and put my jacket on as he got done. A breeze greeted us as he opened the door on our way to the car There’s no need to turn on the aircon: the wind outside is cold enough to give me the shivers. Our parol danced in the early December morn outside as we made our way to the first of nine dawn masses, misa de gallo, simbang gabi.

Yes, it’s that time of the year when kids go giddy and jumpy and eagerly wish for some goodies from Santa, when adults go shopping for gifts to give and teens do pretty much anything in between. Dancing lights brighten up the once lifeless streets and young people traverse these roads, singing carols at every home, either just for fun or with a hope of a small fee.

Christmas is here again.

It was 15 minutes prior to the mass, and yet stalls selling the season’s delicacies outside the church already had people having their orders taken, to be picked up after the mass. Cold wind caressed my cheek once again as I stepped outside the car.  That and the church being dressed with Christmas lights made me feel more excited.

I started attending dawn masses with my dad when I was in my junior year in highschool. That same year, I wrote about Christmas being not what it used to be (Different Christmas, Youngblood, Decemeber 23, 2004.) It seemed to me that it won’t be as much merrymaking as it did in the previous years, perhaps due to the circumstance that everybody was in at that time.

So my dad got me into going with him for Simbang Gabi. He told me about a premise that if you complete the novena mass, you would be granted that wish, and that was the motivation by some to wake up in the wee hours of the morning. I thought of my wish, and I remembered my college exams the next year, and that’s what I wished for back then.

We went to the church beside my highschool, and I saw some batchmates already in our school uniform. Classes start at around 7:30, and the mass ends at around 5:30, so I thought that they’ll get some breakfast before coming to school.

It was a hard ordeal for me at first to attend the mass: waking up at 3 in the morning no matter what time I slept the night before was hard, but I got used to it as the days went by.

It’s the time we spend together that I looked forward to every morning that I’ll wake up and my dad and I would go together to hear mass, get some puto bumbong and bibingka and drive back home. told over and over again whenever the season comes. There’s this one time when the presiding was the one known to be a bit lethargic, and he almost succeeded in putting the both up us asleep, if it wasn’t for the constant pinching my dad and I did to one another. That happened on the first day of simbang gabi two years ago, and we just came from a gathering the night before, so imagine our struggle to wake up early that day. We also had this habit of not taking anything before mass, except for a hot chocolate. Dad told me that during this time, it would be best if we let the host be the first food we take.

Simbang gabi has became an annual event for the two of us, and each time I go to each mass, the more I realize what Christmas really means. It‘s not the number of gifts we see under the  Christmas tree nor getting that expensive thing on our wishlist, it’s the satisfaction that we get from seeing a person’s eye light up as she opens the gift that you spent all night making by yourself and from sharing a night’s meal with the people dear to you.

Every year I wished for something, and incidentally or not, almost all came true. I passed my entrance exams, graduated with honors, and got into a good university. But my wish to have love live is still under the works (well, that can wait. My now hectic academic life deprives me from immersing into another responsibility.) Nevertheless, it’s not the wishes that I was after, it was experiencing a tradition years in the making.

In a few days, I’ll be waking up at 3am to take a shower, get a jacket, drink hot chocolate, and wait for my dad. We’ll welcome the cold winds as we board the car and drive to the church near my highschool, get our orders for puto bumbong and bibingka taken, and attend the first of nine dawn masses, misa de gallo, simbang gabi, and complete the novena again. My wish, that may everyone feel the spirit of Christmas wherever they are.

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Written December 14, 2007. Kurismasu Ommedetou everyone!