CHRISTMAS means so many things to many people. It means carols being played on radio as early as September, city streets filled with lights in Metro Manila and elsewhere, Sta. Claus figures in malls, exchanging of gifts at Christmas parties, Christmas trees covered with lights and with a bright star at the top.
In 2007, the Tarlac Heritage Foundation thought that in all these festivities, all the bright lights and color, all the singing and all the joy of the holiday, there was need to remind everyone of the real essence of Christmas – the reason for the season – which is the birth of Christ. They thus launched what has become a province-wide Belen competition among local governments, various government agencies and offices, and private organizations.
At the center of each display is the baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph, with shepherds and their sheep to one side, three Wise Men on the other, and angels singing above them. Over the years, there have been various interpretations of the Nativity Scene, making use of local materials, in Tarlac’s Belenismo Festival – named after Belen, the Spanish name of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.
President Duterte presided at the awarding of prizes to the winners in the five categories of this year’s festival – community, church, monumental, grand municipal, and grand non-municipal (government agencies and private establishments). The President said he was particularly glad that the military and police in Tarlac were part of the Christmas tradition with their own Nativity Scenes. “Our country’s police force has been under fire for alleged extra-judicial killings,” he said. “But tonight, they showed that they are not the monsters that many perceive them to be. They too know that Christmas should be celebrated with the birth of Christ in mind.”
This Christmas, all over the world, Nativity Scenes have been set up to tell the story of Christ’s birth. Beside the traditional Christmas tree in the center of St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the life-size Nativity Scene this year includes some of the rubble from the basilica of St. Benedict in Malta leveled by an earthquake last October. In the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh have set up their annual Neapolitan Nativity Scenes. Cities in Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere around the world have their own Belens. And, of course, there is the annual Nativity Scene in Bethlehem itself, where it all started, between the Orthodox Church of the Nativity and the town square.
Let us sing carols this Christmas, admire the bright street lights, laugh with Santa Claus, exchange gifts at parties, but let us forget the reason for the season – the birth of Christ in a manger in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago.