At five years old, I had an argument against someone older who said that Santa Claus did not exist. I retorted angrily that Santa was real because he put some coins into the socks that I hung on our door. But being young and wimpy, I was prevailed upon by the bigger fellow. Yet I still think that if one believes in Santa, then it is actually because one also believes in giving.
The best gift I received as a child was a remote-controlled toy car. It’s all broken now, but the good impression has not been shattered. Perhaps some joy felt in a child’s heart lasts a lifetime.
After 41 years, my experience of growing up in a depressed neighborhood remains vivid in my mind. Aside from the joy that each Christmas meant a long vacation from strict teachers, we cherished singing Christmas carols noisily in the neighborhood. We liked the simple life in the barrio, aware of nothing but the limits of our means, and yet still conscious of the true meaning of the most wonderful time of the year: We should give even if we are so poor because we want to make the ones we love happy.
A loaf of bread and some peanut butter defined the Christmas spirit during my childhood. But the world must have become such a terrible place now that whenever people have nothing on the table on Christmas Eve, some suspect that they have been lazy and all that. I don’t know. In the past, there was great merriment during the Yuletide season even if we did not have lechon for noche buena. But it is quite different now. Perhaps the Grinch came at some point in time and stole everything away from us. But things may change, they say.
Some of us actually miss the essence of Christmas. Selflessness is the true message of Christ. The most intolerable part about human existence is wanting everything when we know that many actually have nothing to eat. Poor boys and girls are often told to look for the spirit of the season in their hearts. But there is no point doing that on a hungry stomach. Yet people are not only wasting food when they break bread at parties with those they do not actually like. Some people, whether for good or bad, are throwing away the meaning of their existence in such a superficial environment.
I remember giving an old basketball to a poor kid who sang a Christmas carol one morning a few years back. The look on his face painted such indescribable joy. Until today, what comes to mind is the realization that I am often guilty of two things: The first is that I sometimes give to those who do not really need anything, and the second is I have shared too little with the poor who deserved more. But it also made me understand who is poor and who is actually rich: Some souls are so poor that they will no longer need anything, while the truly rich are those who still recognize the value and meaning of love.
Like most old people, I often come to the conclusion that the world will never be at peace and that millions more will continue to suffer. Indeed, there are many forms of violence in our lifetime. Human poverty is one of those. Poverty kills hope and forces some children to think that there is no love in this world. Being a citizen of a poor country, one might feel helpless. But in truth, what is destroying this world is not just violence but also the lack of love and friendship. The most beautiful message of Christmas is this: We must persist in loving and caring even if others choose not to.
“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man,” Arthur Miller once wrote in his “Death of a Salesman.” Indeed, life is difficult, but life is also beautiful. There is no reason to lose hope.
Christopher Ryan Maboloc, PhD, is assistant professor and former chair of philosophy at Ateneo de Davao University. He completed his doctorate early this year at the University of San Carlos under the supervision of Dr. Charito Pizarro and was awarded maxima cum laude, the highest academic distinction given in the graduate program and first ever conferred by the school.