Morning after Christmas: What truly endures

Today, 26 December, the carols have quieted and the Noche Buena plates dry. In the Philippines, where Christmas stretches across months, the revealing moment is this exhale. The pressure to perform joy has eased. Now we can hear the season’s question: when the party ends, what endures?

Every December, one song returns: “Ang Pasko ay Sumapit,” a carol older than most of us, sung in homes and malls alike. Its closing line clings to me: “kahit hindi Pasko ay magbigayan” (give even when it is no longer Christmas). 

The test is this morning, with wrapping paper and leftovers: does the lyric become habit, or stay a chorus?

Growing up Muslim in Manila, I learned December in flavors. The bibingka at The Manila Hotel, soft and fragrant. And the fruitcake my maternal uncle, Papa Gerry, and our family friend, Professor Armando Valencerina, baked and shared — the only fruitcake I will defend. The trays are empty now. What remains is the lesson they carried: generosity is sharing your world, not displaying your wealth.

There were visits about kinship, not doctrine. One year our father brought us to see his cousin, Uncle Sultan Edgar, along Ortigas Avenue. I remember the living room crowded with cousins, the adults speaking in that code-switched Tagalog and Maranao that marks Manila-based Maranao families, plates of puto and pancit passed around — now a favorite mastered by my aunt. 

One of Uncle Sultan Edgar’s sons, Saripada L. Pacasum Jr., fondly called Tong, lent me his bike that day — perhaps the only time I rode a genuine BMX. Today, Tong heads San Juan’s disaster risk reduction and management office. The boy who shared his bike now builds systems that protect neighbors before crisis arrives. 

Those moments taught me something simple: participation is not conversion. You can honor a season without adopting its theology. You can belong without erasing who you are.

The season also points to Jesus. Christians celebrate Christmas because of Him. Muslims honor Him, too, differently. In Islam, Isa, son of Maryam, is among the most revered prophets, and his mother has a chapter in the Qur’an named for her. That overlap let me stand inside a Christian celebration without feeling erased — not because the theology aligned, but because the practice made room. Respect does not require sameness, only truth told gently.

These memories endure because they reveal a second truth: traditions shape us, systems sustain us. Christmas stirs generosity that can lift families, yet impulse alone cannot carry a country. Islam builds generosity into systems — zakat for justice, sadaqah for compassion, waqf for the public good — so kindness does not wait for nostalgia or a date on the calendar.

What would this look like here? In some barangays, neighbors already pool money when someone gets sick. But these are fragile, dependent on who remembers to collect and who can afford to give that month. Imagine instead a community fund with transparent accounting, regular contributions tied to income. A dialysis balance gets paid before it becomes a crisis. A family burned out of their home has temporary shelter within hours, not after a Facebook fundraiser goes viral. We know how to be generous in emergencies. We have not yet built the structures that make generosity ordinary.

So on this first morning after, the invitation is plain: not to prolong the party, but to convert its warmth into structure. What must remain are channels that move help where it is needed, habits that make giving ordinary, and civic care that does not depend on December. 

If we are proud of the world’s longest Christmas, let us prove it in July. The work of becoming a country that gives, quietly and daily, begins today.