Christmas day

We live in a material world.

Each holiday celebration is so commercialized that in order to feel the meaning of Christmas, there has to be bows and hollies and trees and lights....

Perhaps to some of us, the Yuletide season is a season of gift giving. There are those, however, who are less fortunate and try to make the best of the season by living simply or just getting by.

There is a deeper meaning to Christmas and this is in the sharing with whatever we have to make our fellowmen live more meaningful lives. It is in the giving that we are blessed. It is in the giving that we can find true happiness. No matter how small or big the gift, the real gift is one that comes from the heart.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish Church Preschool has a sponsor-a-child program. The preschool kids from my parish church performed for us a 15-minute number, thanking us for sponsoring them to a preschool program, during the anticipated mass yesterday. It was such a joy to see my little scholar do some song and dance number. It was a greater joy to see that she goes to school and that the money I give as a gift to improve the life or lives of one or a few are not futile.

You see, I too was a scholar. A scholar of the UST Medical Alumni Association of America who covered my fellowship training in Clinical and Molecular Pharmacology at Boston University. A scholar of the World Health Organization during my clinical pharmacology training at Mahidol University in Bangkok. And I know the feeling of being given a gift that was way beyond my expectation. They were gifts that was well used and probably the reason why I am where I am today.

I share this story because I believe in paying it forward. Watching the little children sing and dance was the icing on the cake of my gift. I believe that if we all make a difference by reaching a little deeper in our Louis Vuitton or Gucci or Prada bags and wallets, we would change and make more meaningful the lives of our fellowmen.

We need to start with one, and then there are two, and it multiplies logarithmically. We need to think beyond ourselves and share more with what God has given us in excess, with those who have less. We need to think out of the box called I, Me and Mine.

The true gift we give is not the one opened only on Christmas Day, but the one that makes each day a Merry Christmas.