"Get down on your knees and thank the Child whose birth we are celebrating."
"Get down on your knees and thank the Child whose birth we are celebrating."
In the weeks and days leading up to Christmas, lamentations and expressions of dissatisfaction and discontent are often heard across the land. Why are all these bad things happening? Why are we in the situation we are in and why don’t we have enough of this, that or the other? These are the other questions that one often hears being asked.
These are various ways of categorizing the approximately 110 million people who live in this country today. One of these ways is to categorize some of them as fortunate and the others as unfortunate. Those who are feeling fortunate are looking forward to a reasonably merry Christmas; those who regard themselves as unfortunate think their Christmas 2020 will be the saddest Christmas they have ever seen.
Whether or not a Filipino belongs among the fortunate can be decided by the answers he gives to these questions. If the majority of his answers are positive, he can consider himself truly fortunate; the opposite is true if his answers are mostly negative.
The prior question is, have you lost anyone near and dear as a result of pandemic? There is no stronger basis for feeling unfortunate than to have lost a member of your immediate family or a close relative, or a very dear friend, to COVID-19. It is not possible to feel good about Christmas when there is an empty place at the dining table or the company of a special friend can no longer be had. Personal loss is the worst of losses. It is the killer of good times. It deadens everything.
The second question that a Filipino should ask himself or herself during this season of the Christ child is whether he or she is still employed. Like all pandemics, this one has wiped away jobs across— respecting no person, respecting no region, and respecting religion! MSMEs (medium, small and micro enterprises) have been blown away, with little or no prospect of being restarted. Furloughs, job-sharing, reduced hours, and outright layoffs have been the order of the day. Those who are still standing, employment-wise, and are still receiving salaries and wages regularly are truly fortunate. They are very much the exception.
The third question whose answer is decisive of whether a Filipino can consider himself fortunate is the sufficiency of food in the house. Is there food in the house for three meals every day? A recent survey by Social Weather Stations on the food poverty situation in the country at this time shows a sharp increase in the percentage of Filipinos experiencing no-food situations during a three-month period. Many, many families are not eating enough. Many others are eating hardly at all.
If you, dear reader, have not lost anyone near or dear to COVID-19, still have a job and are able to put enough food on the table for your family, stop bitching and expressing dissatisfaction with things as they are.
Get down on your knees and thank the Child whose birth we are celebrating. You are one of the country’s fortunate people.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
