How to Celebrate a Filipino Christmas….
eHow has everything: How to Celebrate a Filipino Christmas
Instructions
Things You’ll Need:
- Christmas Gifts
- Musical Instruments
- Parols
- Chestnuts
- Ginger Teas
- Hams
- Filipino Music
- Play Filipino Christmas tunes such as “Pasko na Sinta Ko.”
- Attend “Miso de Gallo,” which is a Mass held before dawn on December 16 to mark the start of the nine-day novena.
- Use “parols,” or star-shaped lanterns that have candles inside, to light your way to the church in the dark.
- Purchase native foods such as “puto bumbong” (rice steamed inside a “bumbong,” or small bamboo tube), “bibingka” (rice cake with salted eggs and fresh coconut meat) and “suman” (steamed rice wrapped in banana leaves) outside the church.
- Expect “cumbancheros,” or carolers, to visit your house with musical instruments to serenade you and your neighbors.
- Expect to watch the “Panunuluyan” in the town plaza on Christmas Eve. This is a re-enactment of the Holy Couple’s journey to Bethlehem and portrays the lack of hospitality they encountered along the way.
- Attend midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. This is always a special event that children wear new clothes to.
- Gather with friends and relatives for “Noche Buena” after the Mass ends. This is a festive meal followed by the exchange of gifts, which lasts through the next morning.
- Arrange to visit family and friends on Christmas Day.
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Remember that the holiday season draws to a close with the Feast of the Three Kings on the first Sunday of January; the kings followed a star to find the manger where Jesus was born.
-Marc
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