For me it’s always the same. Gangs of Christmas carolers gather on the patio to sing until we throw them money. Christmas ornaments pop off the tree for quick escapes ending in their own destruction. And on Christmas day, we attend a midnight mass which is pretty much, well, Latin to me.
It’s not that I’m a Scrooge, though God knows I’ve been called that. No, the real problem is that I’m a Jew in a land where there are few. In fact, the only synagogue I know of in the Philippines is more than 700 kilometers away.
And so I try to compensate. Following the completion of our Surigao City house in 2020, I had a mezuzah mounted at its front door. A small vessel containing the Shema Yisrael, Judaism’s most central declaration of faith, it is traditionally placed at the entrance of Jewish homes in fulfillment of God’s Biblical instruction to write “these words which I command you…on the doorposts of your home and on your gates.”
How well I recall the Filipino worker’s blank stare as we recited the mandatory Hebrew prayers while he tightened the last screw. Even more vivid, though, is the angst I felt as a local priest prepared to bless our home by sprinkling Holy Water on that defenseless Jewish relic.
Oh my God, I thought, will it hiss and explode when touched by the sacred moisture imbued by this Catholic man of Jesus? Will hot steam fill the room as the flames of Hell burn our new house to the ground?
Fortunately, none of that happened. Which really didn’t matter, though, because a short time later Super Typhoon Odette blew the sacred Hebrew object to—I’m just guessing here—approximately the same place.
More recently, I tried introducing Hanukkah to my Filipino family. The holiday harkens back to 168 B.C. when the Syrian King Antiochus Epiphanes sent his soldiers to Jerusalem where they desecrated the Temple and commanded the Jews to worship Greek gods. But a Jewish resistance movement led by a priestly family called the Maccabees rebelled against the king’s rule and defeated his army, even though badly outnumbered.
Afterwards, gathered to re-dedicate the Temple with the light of its sacred candle, they found only enough oil to burn for one day. And yet it miraculously lasted for eight, setting the precedent for the annual celebration in which Jews light a new candle on each of eight successive nights.
Though never a major Jewish holiday, Hanukkah has become well known and much-loved, largely because of its proximity to Christmas. It’s a celebration of religious freedom in which darkness is symbolically banished by light.
My Filipino relatives listened politely as I explained all this while lighting the candles and reciting the blessings. Then my 13-year-old son, who’s being raised Catholic, broke the silence with a question. “Yes,” he said, “but are there presents?”
Which brings us back to Christmas.
I’ve never been overly religious in the traditional sense. I’ve never felt the need to regularly attend a church or synagogue. And yet I do feel the presence of something I call God. I feel it in a beautiful sunset or the sanguine view from a mountaintop. I feel it in the love of family and friends. I see it in the faces of my children as they wake me each morning. And I feel it today as the world celebrates the birth of Jesus.
These are troubling times in which people of different faiths are battling each other for dominance worldwide. My wish for this Christmas Day is simple: that all of them—all of us—hear the voice of the same God. And that—whether in a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a sunset—it fills us with good will.
With that in mind, I wish you a Merry Christmas. (DH)
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