24/12/2025
๐๐ข๐๐จ๐ ๐ก | ๐๐ง๐ค๐ข ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐ฉ๐๐๐ง ๐๐๐๐ ๐ค๐ ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐พ๐๐ง๐ค๐ก
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โThey say Christmas doesnโt feel the same as it did ten years ago.
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โMost adults would nod quietly, knowing the weight of that statementโthe way responsibilities settle on your shoulders not like a cozy blanket, but like a coat you canโt take off. Unlike before, thereโs a strange hesitation now, a holding back of joy, as if happiness requires a permission slip weโve outgrown.
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โWhen I was ten, there was a particular Christmas party hosted near our house every year, which I never missed until I was fifteen. Back then, joy was a physical place you could run to, a noise you could touch. Christmas thrummed from the corners of my ears. The tinny, triumphant blast of karaoke from next door competed with the static bass of a radio carol from across the street. It shivered up through the soles of my feet from the pounding of my own running footfalls, racing to join a game.
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โSometimes, Iโd ask my siblings and peers to carol house to house with me. Weโd practice our shaky renditions of โThank you, thank you, ang babait ninyo!โ on the walk over, our paper lanterns bobbing in the dark. Then, my pockets would jingle with loose coins. Iโd feel that fizzy excitement, counting my share on the sidewalk under a streetlight, wealth measured in candy and firecrackers.
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โNow, I still feel the same fizzy excitement. Not from the jingle in my own pocket, but from the sound of it in anotherโs. When kids come to the door, their voices tentative but brave, I fumble for the coins Iโve set aside just for this. I see their heads tilt to hear the weight of the gift drop into their tin can, their faces lighting up with the same old transaction of song for silver.
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โI watch them scamper away, their joyful โThank you, thank you, ang babait ninyo!โ fading into the December night, and my heart does that familiar, fizzing leap. The song is the same. The excitement is the same. Only my side of the door has changed.
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โThat moment at the threshold made me understand. Itโs not that Christmas lost its lightโwe outgrew our old way of seeing it. We reached a point where it doesnโt have to feel โmerryโ in that electric, childlike sense anymore, because that kind of merry is built on a wonder we canโt fake.
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โRight now, through my window, I can still hear children laughing, their joy so absolute it paints the evening air. And a thought hits me. Christmas didnโt change. Only that, we arenโt the same people we were ten years ago.
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โThe season still holds its magic. The same December still carries the same stars. We are the ones who see it from a different perspectiveโone focused on budgets, schedules, and making sure others feel what we once felt. It isnโt that the feeling left; itโs that it still exists, just not for us in the same way.
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โOur joy has matured. It lives in the giving, not the getting. In the silence after the noise, and the warmth we make for others. In the memory of a time when all it took to be merry was a jingle of loose coins or the hope of getting the biggest gift in the pile.
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โWe didnโt have much back then. But we had December. And in a way, we still do.
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โIt just looks different from the other side of the carol.
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โWords: Federico Napiรฑas
โGraphic Manipulation: Gwyneth Panonce
