To give is an invitation to happiness

While we are so busy preparing our best Noche Buena for tonight, there are far more busy people who have to scrounge the garbage bins in the hope of finding their own Noche Buena for the night. And about the same number, or even more, will have to bear the night’s passing without food in their mouths and rather wish that they would never make it the next morning.         

It makes me terribly unhappy to know that Christmas which is supposedly the happiest time of the year, is the unhappiest time for a lot of people. Two days ago, our organization went around the city to carol and distribute Noche Buenas to families who live on the sidewalks as part of the group’s tradition every Christmas season. Many of them had infants or young children and had to sleep with barely anything but piled newspapers to separate their backs from the damp and sullied ground. It wasn’t only a sordid sight (enough to break even the coldest of hearts) but a patent revelation of a perennial and uncured social disease long-unattended by government as if left to age and die a natural death.

This yearly event is something that we always look forward to. But this year was quite different. We had more gifts but there were not enough for everyone. The dangerous part of it all was when we were about to leave the place so we could visit other areas. People were thronging our vehicles begging for mercy that they too deserve a Noche Buena. No matter how politely we refused many of them, they were starting to bang our cars. They shouted at us and threatened not to let our vehicles pass if we leave without giving them. But we did manage to escape from the angry mob letting go some of the gifts intended for other locations.

It was frightening for most of us. But it was also for the most part, an experience that made us ponder on the harsh reality that begs not only the attention of the government but our attention as well. That there are hungry people around us so willing to injure the kindness of others if only to get what they want. But that shouldn’t dampen our spirits to give. It should push us to think that these people came to behave that way because the world around them is harsh and greedy. They need to be understood – that they would not have behaved that way if the world they live in was fair to them. Hence, it is our duty to remove the layers that separate the haves and the have nots. To help them carry their faint voices to a government with a deaf ear for the underprivileged.

We have to continue giving even if it tires or hurt us. The joy of giving is not about giving what we can afford to give, but to “give until it hurts” in the words of Mother Theresa. Lest we forget, the essence of Christmas is always about sacrificial giving. God gave a good part of Himself by giving His son with the foreknowledge that Jesus was going to be received with a cold heart, to be despised at and to meted out with a painful death so that we may understand the meaning of our existence – to live for others. That it is by living for the sake of others that we give hope to a world driven by personal gain.

As we celebrate Christmas with our families, let us also remember those families who only have the open sky for a roof and whose little children becoming potentially another addition to society’s problem.  

God had probably made himself to come as a child for He wanted us to love Him like we usually do to a child. By becoming small and weak, He teaches us to love the weak. We can change the fate of the weak if we keep that faith in ourselves to make that change in others one person at a time and someday, famous poet Henry Drummond puts it, “You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”

The call to give and respond to these challenges is an invitation to happiness.  

Have a blessed, giving and meaningful Christmas everyone!

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