A Christmas to Remember

When I was still living in our remote sitio of Ruparan in Digos, celebrating a yuletide season was not that very lavish.  The people there are really living below poverty threshold level.  Just imagine a family of five for that matter earning only 120 pesos a day.  Usually what were prepared in our dining table were loaves of bread sandwiched with pancit and then partnered with a bottle of soft drinks.  

photo grabbed from bing images

If a family prepared some viands stuffed with meat already, they were considered rich in our place.

Our community was just very small.  In fact, in the place where we resided, it was composed of 4 houses only.  We were separated by hectares of rice field from the other part of the community.  Although, we were only few, we never let a Christmas pass without a celebration.

 In the year 2002, more or less, I was already working as an Instructor at that time in Mindanao State University, we planned of having a lechon pig in our noche buena.  Considering that it was that very expensive to have a lechon, I opened the idea of preparing a lechon for all of us and then divide it among ourselves to at least lessen the expenses.  All of us would contribute in buying the pig for lechon.

However, the idea of contributing something to have a bigger amount was not taken positively by some of the members in our community.  I almost gave it up until somebody proposed to have a Christmas Carol so that we would be able to generate funds.  Thus, we agreed to have a Christmas Carol.

We have scheduled to start our Christmas Carol when we would have our Christmas break already considering that I was still teaching at that time in MSU.  So as agreed we started our caroling in the second week of December.

Usually around 7:00 in the evening, we were done eating already.  Then we grouped ourselves.  All of us participated including my mother who was 66 years old at that time.  It was my mother who stood as a treasurer, most of us brought spoon as our cymbals, then we borrowed a guitar.  There was no practice so to speak.  I was the one who would say wishing the household a merry christmas and a happy new year before we got the money.

We almost caroled the entire barangay.  Usually, it was already dawn when we returned home.  Most of the houses we caroled gave 5 pesos only but we did not care.  What we had in our mind at that time was to have a money for our lechon.  Every morning, my mother would do the auditing also and would update every member of our community.

Finally, we were able to collect a total of 3500 pesos more or less of caroling money.

We then bought one big pig to be lechoned.  Then we divided the lechon amongst us all.

That was the first Christmas that we had lechon in our noche buena.  

A Christmas shared by one community.  

A Christmas that is only in our remote sitio of Ruparan.

A Christmas that is worth remembering.