The Christmas season is here. Christmas parties are already set and people have started attending these social events. For many companies, these parties become such annual highlights that they have become more and more lavish in preparations and expenses. Even celebrities are commissioned as guests and presenters to make the parties more alive.
In the light of the parties that are to happen left and right, I appeal to all of us here in the Philippines to be temperate and sober in our parties and spending. I could only imagine the amount that will be spent in homecomings, annual reunions, Christmas get-togethers and the like. There have been times when people go through a lot of debts when the Season is over. Too many times, when the celebrations have lost the meaning or the reason for the season, the gatherings tend to become a place for inebriated to make fools of themselves. I cringe at some of the party games done in these occasions for entertainment. Sexual jokes or presentations brimming with sexual innuendoes have also become the norm.
I prayerfully request that we be temperate and sober and remember.
While we have been invited to these parties in posh hotels or other venues, a growing percentage (24%!!) of our countrymen go through involuntary hunger.
A big percentage of our country is still going through the massive loss incurred by ONDOY, PEPING, massive fire in Mandalayong and other places.
Families of the 57 massacred individuals are still trying to find the shattered pieces of their lives.
During the Advent Season, we celebrate Christ. We celebrate our Savior whom the world in general has decided to ignore.
We celebrate the One who gave everything so that we might have all.
Let us strive to honor him in these celebrations by focusing on what He came here for. If Jesus attended your Christmas parties, would be come home exalted or would he come home terribly ignored?
Have fun. Enjoy these events with friends and make meaningful connections or reconnections with friends and families and even workmates. The Lord would be really pleased with that.
But in the midst of our celebrations, let us remember that the heart of the Lord also goes out for the downtrodden, the widows, the orphans and those who go through so much without in their daily lives. Maybe we can cut down our wine expenses and entertainment budgets. Maybe we don’t need to spend thousands upon thousands of money for a party that will last for 5 hours…. and even sponsor a party for those who only manage to eat once a day. There are many places where people would appreciate eating three meals a day. You will be surprised to hear and see their proximity to yours.
You may ignore this and even label this post as an event-killer. I cannot make you do these things though, that is why I am writing this as a request.
This is in behalf of those who still cry, who feel the very familiar hunger pangs, the orphans sniffing substances under the flyovers in the city and in so many more places where so many people go through daily with so much less, than we could even begin to imagine.
