Winston Churchill once said, “Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.” As the big day draws near, it is important to reflect on the roots of the global holiday as well as the direction in which it is heading. Christmas is a tradition rooted deep in the history of western society. It has undergone many changes since it’s earliest celebrations. Even today, the holiday is constantly changing. Each year brings new innovations to Christmas. In the dawn of the holiday, it was minor and focused on the birth of Jesus, the light of the world. In the 19th century, Christmas was a time of family and goodwill to mankind. Today, though there still remains aspects of religion and selflessness, more than ever it has become a holiday consumed by commercialism. It is a development that is not likely to go way any time soon.…
My heart raced and all my adrenaline sped through my veins and my smile went from ear to ear. I started to run while everything around me felt like it was going in slow motion. As I finally reached my stopping point and jumped up so swiftly that I felt like I was flying as I was caught and gripped tightly. My face began to get warm as tears of happiness flew down my cheeks. When I looked up after being released from the tight grasp I just stopped there in shock smiling. There standing in front of me was my hero, my hopes and prayers that had all come true, my uncle Troy came home. People all around us cheered loudly bringing me back to reality and giving me time to look around. There were news crews there recording it all and flashing pictures of the occurring moment. Not only did I witness what was my Christmas miracle, so did everyone else that was there and watched it on the news. My picture that is now cherished holds my soldier who sacrificed himself for our freedom, who I prayed and hoped for and who I love with all my heart popped up behind Santa Clause’s chair. He was and always will be my Christmas…
I liked the cement mixer and played with it as much as or more than I played with the other toy vehicles I owned. At some point, several weeks or months after Christmas, however, my biological parents led me to believe that it was a magic and/or highly unusual cement mixer. Probably my mother told me this in a moment of adult boredom or whimsy, and then my father came home from work and joined in, also in a whimsical way. The magic—which my mother likely reported to me from her vantage on our living room’s sofa, while watching me pull the cement mixer around the room by its rope, idly asking me if I was aware that it had magical properties, no doubt making sport of me in the bored half-cruel way that adults sometimes do with small children, playfully telling them things that they pass off to themselves as “tall tales” or “childlike inventions,” unaware of the impact those tales may have (since magic is a serious reality for small children), though, conversely, if my parents believed that the cement mixer’s magic was real, I do not understand why they waited weeks or months before telling me of it. They were a delightful but often impenetrable puzzle to me; I no more knew their minds and motives than a pencil knows what it is being used for. Now I have lost the thread. The “magic” was that, unbeknown to me, as I happily pulled the cement mixer behind me, the mixer’s main cylinder or drum—the thing that, in a real cement mixer, mixes the cement; I do not know the actual word for it—rotated, went around and around on its horizontal axis, just as the drum on a real cement mixer does. It did this, my mother said, only when the mixer was being pulled by me and only, she stressed, when I wasn’t looking. She insisted on this part, and my father later backed her up: the magic was not just that the drum of a solid wood object without batteries rotated but that it did so only when unobserved, stopping whenever observed. If, while pulling, I turned to look, my parents sombrely…
Being 6 years old at the time I didn’t quite know why my mom and sister always left very early that next morning, it was just something I knew that happened. I remember thinking that I thought it was like a national mother/daughter shopping day because my dad never went, he stayed home with me. I was kind of upset because they always came back with so many bags and I thought, “Wow, they didn’t get me one thing? Not even just one little thing.” Mainly because like any other 6 year old I wanted something when someone else got something. I remember thinking oh well Christmas is soon and Santa Claus seemed as real to me as my family. My father had something planned for us to do that day. I think it was going and watching a basketball game but I’m not quite sure. So I had a good night’s sleep anxiously awaiting the next day. Come to find out the next day wasn’t at all what I had planned it to be.…
I already knew Santa didn’t exist. At the age when most kids were trying to stay awake all night on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, I was in my bed, anxiously trying to fall asleep so morning would come faster and I could open presents. Unlike most kids my age, I already knew the real story. It was a hoax, a story that parents tell their kids to trick them into believing that if they if they weren’t good, Santa wouldn’t bring them anything. I knew that they, in fact, were the ones putting those presents under the tree and that the child’s behavior had little to do with it. I knew it, but I didn’t tell. I didn’t tell my friends at school, my cousins, or even my mom that I knew the truth. I already knew about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I knew that if you held your face a certain way for long enough, it wouldn’t stay that way, and that you wouldn‘t go blind from sitting to close to the television. When I was about six or seven, I started asking my dad questions...and got answers.…
* Daria Ramirez (Manang Elsa) – the faith healer who performs the healing and prescribes herbal medicine.…
T was the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled down for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash…
It’s the day before Christmas! I woke up full with Christmas Spirit. My family and me gather around and decorate our house with Christmas wreath, mistletoe, Christmas stockings, and especially the Christmas tree, which is decorated again with beautiful Christmas tree ornaments, Christmas light and the star on top. We stayed at home all day until the evening because it took us a quite long time to decorate the whole house. Then we prepare to go to the Church for the Midnight Mass in the Christmas Eve. We’re going to celebrate the birth of Jesus! So at the Church, we pray and praising Him by singing Christmas Carols. I’m so excited that tomorrow is Christmas! So when we get back, I slept early so that I can have enough energy for tomorrow.…
I can distinctively remember the Christmas of 2006; it was the year my son (Jaylen) was born. It’s the year I realized that my spoiled days were over and it was not only about me any more. It was the first time I actually realized that I’m Mommy now! It was a very fearful and joyful moment at the same time; my family didn’t pay as much attention to me anymore. They were occupied with my new baby boy (Jaylen), I was extremely happy, they had taken to my son because 18 months earlier they were a little upset that I was going to have a baby(they thought I was too young). My dad was the happiest I have seen him in years, he was a proud grand pap. I’ll admit I was a little jealous because all the attention was no longer on just me I had to now share it. Then again I sat back and thought I’m an adult now and I should not be treated like a baby anymore, so from that point forward I found the grown up I had hidden inside.…
The celebration of Christmas in the Philippines begins on the 16th of December and ends on the first Sunday of January which is the Feast of the Epiphany (The Three Kings). It is quite different from the other countries of the world, it is the longest of the Philippine festivities stretching for over 3 weeks. This makes the Filipino Christmas celebration one of the longest Christmas season in the world. A rich tradition which dates back to the Spanish period.…
When I had eleven years old, I had the most memorable Christmas in my life. I grew up with my mom, dad, one sister, and twin brothers. On December 1991, it was excited and memorable for all my family as my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother because we went to my grandmother house to celebrate Christmas. My Uncle Marco rented a large bus to go to my grandmother’s house. My grandmother lived in a little town called Huacho, which is located about 100 miles from Lima (capital of Peru). All my family and I will never forget this Christmas because we enjoyed and celebrated.…
I like the Christmas day because it is the only holiday where all my family is together. Usually the party is in my aunt Rosa´s house, my grandparents, my dad and I arrive the day twenty-four at morning to help make the food and go buy things, but I don´t know cook but I help chopping or peeling vegetables also prepared water and anything else needed.…
Christmas has always been my favorite holiday since I was a little kid. It wasn’t just the gifts that I got it was all the good time my family had during the holiday season. We would always make a ginger bread house and we would always have homemade cookies in the house during this time. We would also decorate a tree that we picked from the local fire department.…
Many people around the world have many family traditions and many different ways of celebrating the holiday of Christmas. One thing that we all have in common is engaging in the family tradition of hanging brightly colored bulbs, shining lights, glistening beads, and heirloom ornaments from an evergreen, more commonly know as the Christmas tree.…
If someone was to simply ask what their favorite holiday of the year is, they would expect Christmas to be the answer. For most of the people who have the pleasure of being able to celebrate this holiday, they would usually agree. In my family, this would certainly be the automatic response.…