Daily Report: The Loudest Christmas Evah

Epril and her sisters
out partying.Christmas in The Philippines is a party... a gigantic birthday party. From early Christmas Eve to late Christmas night, the party goes on. It started off at sundown on Christmas Eve with every house in the neighborhood having a party, playing music, and serving food. The streets are filled with folks walking around and enjoying the evening.

After the parties end, everybody goes to church for the Midnight Mass. After that, all of the parties (plus lots of firecrackers) resume until 3:00 or later in the morning.


A preacher entertains the neigh-
borhood with a loud sound system.For us here at our house (at our corner), Christmas morning started at 7 a.m. with a loud P.A. system being set up. First, a lady came on and started getting all the local kids involved in various games such as musical chairs and "hip-hip hooray", shouting instructions and blasting music over the sound system. Then local officials came on the scene at about 10:00 and gave various speeches. In between was more loud music. Then a preacher emcee came on who shouted the evangel of Christmas for most of the afternoon. Then, from sundown until 3:00 in the morning, was a disco. (Just to add insult to injury, the person running the disco seemed to have brought only one re-mixed CD with him with only 10 songs on it... and it just recycled the same songs about every 30 minutes.)


Anyway, I took Tyson out for a walk in the morning, and snapped these 2 more tranquil photos. First various groups of sacristans walk through town carrying a Christ child to be kissed by the villagers. Here was one such group meeting up with a couple of the locals in their go-cart.

On the village green sits this very typical Filipino house with a cement menagerie in the front yard. Tyson had a fit the first time he walked past the hippopotamus, but now he just pees on it every time.