A Filipino Christmas

Holding onto their HERITAGE

Winners of the 2019 Parol contest at Vallejo High School.

Rozzana Verder Aliga

Filipino Christmas traditions bring families and community together in American Canyon

Though it focuses on marking the same miraculous occurrence as in the West – the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem manger – Filipino Christmas traditions have their own unique flavor, figuratively and literally.

In other words, if there are Parols, the Simbang Gabi, the Belens and bibingkas – it’s probably Christmas in the Philippines or the Filipino American community.

According to several Napa and Solano County area Filipino-American community leaders, Filipino Christmas starts in the fall and stretches through the first of the year.

“Christmas starts in September,” said Elmer Manaid, president of the Fil-Am of

RACHEL RASKIN-ZRIHEN

American Canyon club. “There’s a saying – Christmas starts once the months ending in ‘bur’ start. I think we have officially the longest Christmas season – ‘till January. Christmas trees and lights start going up in September. Christmas lanterns made out of bamboo and colored paper that kids make in school. Christmas music starts playing on radio stations. And it carries on until the first Sunday in January, with the Feast of the Three Kings.”

Living in American Canyon since 2007, and the owner of a business providing residential care for disabled adults, Manaid offers one possible explanation for the longer holiday season.

“Remember, we don’t have Thanksgiving and other holidays, like Halloween,” he said.

There are other possible factors, as well, he said.

“I grew up in Manila, and was urbanized, but in the rural areas, many live a very simple life – farmers, agriculture business – working very hard, out in the fields tending their animals – and the end of the year is the harvest. (Christmas) celebrates and gives thanks for a bountiful year. It also comes near the end of the typhoon season. We get about 100 typhoons between June and November, and by December they’re

grateful for surviving. Mostly, I think it’s a celebration of a good year.”

The Filipino holiday season typically kicks off with Parol-making events, said Lucy “Luchi” Marte of American Canyon, who teaches Filipino language at Vallejo’s Jesse Bethel High School.

As the area’s unofficial “culture bearer,” Marte also produces an annual Parol Festival.

Parols are Christmas lanterns that represent the Star of Bethlehem, and are hung outside of people’s homes as an expression of shared faith and hope,” she said. “There is no greater symbol of the Filipino Christmas than the parol.”

“For Filipinos, making parols marks the beginning of the Christmas season,” Marte said. “We want to celebrate and continue the tradition so that the next generation will not forget this beautiful tradition.”

The word Parol comes from the Spanish word, “Farol,” or “lantern.” Its history can be traced to the Pinata, she said, the idea for which came from Spain to Italy in the 1300s, to Mexico and finally to the Philippines in the late 1500s, when the Spaniards brought it along with Christianity to the islands.

“The parol was originally used to light the way to church where Filipinos attended the ‘Misa de Gallo’ or “Mass of the Rooster,” which is held on Dec. 16, Marte said.

Parols are traditionally “made from bamboo sticks and rice paper and sometimes cellophane with a tassel at each point, like a shooting star,” she said. “Candles were originally used to light the inside but now variations of lights are used.”

Like many who grew up in the Philippines, Manaid treasures many fond memories of Christmas there.

“Growing up Catholic – and 90 percent of the Philippines is Catholic – Christmas Eve mass was the biggest tradition everybody did, before dinner at midnight,” he said. “The dinner is called ‘bountiful dinner,’ or ‘Noche Buena.’ Holy Family Catholic Church in American Canyon does this still. I think there’s very strong support among the Filipino community to keep these traditions.”

Like Marte, Manaid said many Filipino traditions resulted from the islands being a Spanish colony 300 to 400 years ago.

“The dinner is my favorite part,” he said. “The food that really binds the family and the whole community together. It’s very communal. There’s a lot of sharing – food, music, celebrations – it’s not just a family event, and I think that translates to how in

Submitted photo

Luchi Marte, John and Arlene Collins, Raven Guilas ( Parol Virtual Competition Winner 2021), AC Mayor Leon Garcia and wife Eva.

Kobby_dagan, Dreamstime.com

Traditional Parols, or Christmas lanterns, on display in Manila, December 2014.

this small diaspora really, Filipinos try to bring that community everywhere we go.”

Manaid described bibingkas – a rice pancake topped with cheese and sometimes coconut shavings – as his favorite holiday fare.

“I loved it as a kid,” he said. “People would set up food carts outside of church and you could smell it cooking outside. And I remember looking forward to getting out of church and getting some of that. It makes Christmas official.”

The holiday food was big in the Aliga household, too, said retired U.S. Army Col. Nestor Aliga of Vallejo, who works with veterans groups around the area.

Bibingkas in the Aliga family, are rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves and baked in clay pots, and a favorite treat.

“I grew up in a small town in northern Philippines until 1967,” Aliga said. “We did not have electricity so we cooked by burning wood. I still remember the unique taste/ flavor that the banana leaves and local wood smoke would leave on the food.”

As the eighth of nine siblings, one had to be quick on the draw to get the goodies, he said.

“On many dinners, I would sneak and store extra food under my shirt because there seemed to be very little food left if you are not fast enough to eat,” he said. “One time, my mom ordered me to get up to get something and most of the food fell on my tsinelas or shower shoes. So I gingerly walked around a corner to try to save the food but our skinny, underfed dog ate it before I could save any.”

Manaid and Marte both said they prefer the less “commercialized” Filipino Christmas tradition to the American version.

“I think the part where Christmas in America is very commercial – about who gets the nicest gift, has the most lights, the tallest tree,” Manaid said. “In the Philippines it’s simpler and therefore more meaningful. People put up what they have. It’s maybe more sacred than commercial. It’s about the birth of Jesus there more. The western influence is of Santa and reindeer. There it’s the birth of Christ. No elves or reindeers. A lot of that has changed, though, honestly, with the prevalence of western influence.”

Filipinos take great pride in their Christmas traditions, and work to keep them alive in the United States, but they are gradually becoming more Western, Manaid said.

“I’d have to say it’s the pride of the Filipino to say ours is better, bigger, more solemn, but to tell the truth, it’s really the same because in the past 50 years there’s been a strong western influence with media, social media and the western Christmas has really been adopted. Many used to go home just for Christmas because they don’t feel it’s as meaningful to do it here.”

This, Manaid said, is one of several reasons why many Filipinos hang on to the old ways.