December is still the best part of the year.

Despite the many challenges that we have to face, day after day, within the year, we never fail to celebrate a beautiful Christmas holiday.

Just like the lyrics of the song “A Perfect Christmas” by Jose Mari Chan, sparkling lights indeed are all over town. Colorful decorative lights in various forms and shapes adorn most of the town plazas from north to south of Iloilo. 

Here in the city proper, the capitol grounds are brightly lit in beautiful hues as the scent of freshly cooked street food permeates the air.

Christmas carols are also heard from a distance which add more meaning to the celebratory atmosphere in the city. 

Families also come together to attend the famous simbang gabi tradition and after the mass is an early morning food treat of a hot bibingka or puto bumbong.

Christmas shopping is one big get-together event too for families at this time of the year. Filipino families, rich or poor, always find ways to buy some gifts.

While established stores and huge malls create so many Christmas promotions and discounted offerings to entice customers, the small shops and informal stores in Calle Real also have their own gimmicks to maintain their loyal customers.

Christmas for all of us symbolizes love, peace and hope for our country. So, in our own little ways, we find the value of gift giving, no matter how big or small, as a form of sharing the blessings to families, friends, colleagues, neighbors and other communities.

It is also a form of expressing our love and deep appreciation to people who, in one way or another, have touched our lives.

However, it is also inevitable that the spirit of giving on Christmastime is also dampened by those who resort to “begging”, thereby, taking advantage of the holiday season to approach people and ask various donations to unheard of organizations.

It is very rampant, nowadays, that while walking on the street, or strolling by the plaza an individual will approach you and give you a white envelope asking for money. 

There are even individuals in Jaro area, who will hitch a ride in jeepneys and simply distribute the white envelopes expecting that you return it to them with bills. 

I feel disheartened sometimes when a huge and strong-looking male or healthy-looking female will distribute their envelopes to students and senior citizens asking for money as gifts for them, when physically, they are more capable of doing decent work to earn money. 

Personally, I can’t help being suspicious about it, especially, when they just give you a blank envelope with no name of their organization or who they are, or where they come from.

For a typical worker, who works hard, 8 hours a day to earn money in order to buy the basic need of your family, it is quite harassing to experience such situation.

Our old folks always say, “kabubut-on ang paghatag”. It takes a strong heart for an individual to turn his or her cheek to the other side just to say “no” for those who are asking for alms in Christmastime.

So, it is such a shame, that there are those people, who use Christmas gift-giving as an excuse, to earn easy money. The so-called “culture of begging” among Filipinos.

Knowing that they exist, we need to make a tough stand to say “no” so that the likes of them will never proliferate in the city and in the country.#