by Zandra Mendoza || Photo by Philstar Global

It’s the 24th of December. The scent of Noche Buena dinner permeating the air, the sound of wrinkling gift wrap being stripped apart by children underneath embellished trees singing around the living room, and the soft glow of series lighting wrapped around a tree are what fill the house of a family living inside a gated community. Their subdivision is raised upon hilltops conveniently tall enough to not catch a glimpse of the people who live just below their feet. 

The people who have never felt leche flan melting on their tongue on Noche Buena. Children who’ve never been under the shade of a plastic pine tree, with holes in their socks and no milk and cookies left for themselves, much less for Santa. People whose dinner tables are not chock-full of hearty, warm meals on the eve before the biggest holiday of the season.

People whose Christmas is not a holiday, but merely another day spent working for the knife. 

Christmas for them is walking the streets with aching feet as the buildings they pass by blast Mariah Carey, blissfully unaware. Christmas is worrying about whether or not a thirteenth month pay is coming, if they’re lucky enough to even work minimum wage. Christmas is squeezing through aisles in divisorias to find toys cheap enough to keep at least some sort of Christmas spirit alive for their children who’ve yet to realize the reality of what Christmas is and will be like for them. Christmas is no day to celebrate at all. It’s a day where the line between them and those that live comfortably above is even more apparent. 

It’s the 24th of December, still. The scent of a newly opened can of sardines and soy sauce permeates the air. The sound of children singing off-tune and mismatched lyrics to holiday songs in front of large mahogany doorsteps, some even simply begging for a morsel of food or a dime, chimes through. The flickering glow of a lightbulb seconds away from going out is the only light left shining on them. These are what fill not only one house, but dozens of streets where dilapidated houses line up in rows.

This isn’t merely Christmas for one, or two, or a few people. This is Christmas for all that live below privileged feet, no matter how deep under. This is Christmas for most in a country where staying warm on the eve before the 25th is a luxury in itself. 

This is a Paskong Pinoy, in a country where even the Christmas Spirit has a price.