Gift-giving is a Christmas tradition. It’s the reason the season is also a time of great economic activity.
There are presents for loved ones and family members, as well as extended families and acquaintances. Sometimes Filipinos take the practice further by giving gifts to everyone they know for the sake of giving. They feel they will be criticized if they turned up empty-handed.
It’s a tradition rooted in good intentions, but could easily be overdone or misused.
What’s often overlooked is a kind of present that is intangible and has no monetary value.
Kindness has always been deemed both virtue and vice, but in our present dog-eat-dog environment it is more often frowned upon. It is equated with weakness and an inability to assert oneself. To be kind means to allow other people to walk all over you.
But this assumes the worst about our fellowmen. It presupposes that other people will jump at the first opportunity to take advantage of one’s kindness. If we get rid of this assumption, however, kindness will only beget more kindness.
We are seeing a lot of dishonesty, and meanness, and strife, from schoolchildren in uniforms, trolls in front of computer screens, to men and women in positions of power. We are bombarded by the thought that the only solution to social ills is an iron-fisted approach that instills terror and submission instead of compassion and decency.
It is heartbreaking to see that many actually believe that kindness is an undesirable quality and that real strength is shown by talking tough and taking extreme measures to assert one’s position.
Perhaps it is too late to tell this to Filipinos of a certain age and temperament. They have spent their lifetime living a certain way and will no longer see merit in changing their approach.
But for children, for whom Christmas is, anyway, examples of small acts of kindness—not grand gestures but simple acts in everyday settings—would be priceless as we educate them that not everything has a price tag, and not everything that is noisy and hard is strong.