A Heavy December
There is a heaviness to December this year — the kind that settles in the chest long before lanterns are hung, or carols drift through the malls. We are celebrating Christmas against a backdrop of corruption scandals so brazen, they’ve warped the very cost of living. For ordinary Filipinos — and especially for small entrepreneurs like myself — the consequences arrive daily. Runaway inflation erodes margins, rising production, and regulatory processes so labyrinthine, they make you wonder if small businesses are meant to survive at all.
Every hard-earned peso feels thinner now. It stretches less. It buys less. It comforts less. And yet, Christmas insists on arriving — luminous as ever, stubborn as our hope.
What Christmas Has Always Meant
December in the Philippines was never just about abundance. It was about affirmation:
You matter. You are remembered. You are loved.
Even when the country makes loving it a complicated thing.
Even when we gather around a Noche Buena table pared down to what ₱500 can manage, we find ways to make the evening bright.
But this year, the question feels sharper: How do we give when our own footing feels unsteady? What does generosity look like in an age of contraction?
The Shift Toward Intention
The truth is, we still want to show gratitude — to our staff who carried us through lean months, to clients who kept faith in us, to friends who stayed steady when the year asked too much. We still want to see our children’s eyes light up on Christmas Eve. We still want to sit with family over something warm and special.
But perhaps the measure of giving has changed. Crisis asks us to gift with intention rather than excess — to invest in meaning rather than spectacle. This year, I made a quiet promise: every gift I give will be fully, proudly local.
In a landscape distorted by corruption — where purchasing power has been stolen long before it even reaches our wallets — directing whatever we have left toward our own producers feels like a reclamation. A small rebellion. A vote for the Philippines. We want to believe in.
What Giving Can Look Like Now
Maybe this year, the most powerful gifts are those anchored in intention.
- Homemade rather than store-bought: a jar of pickles, a tray of baked macaroni, a tin of cookies, half a dozen pandesal made with care. Not because they are cheap — but because they are personal.
- Experiences instead of objects: a walk through Burnham at dusk, a shared pot of tsokolate, a quiet dinner where the gift is presence.
- Support for local farmers and artisans: buy from your suking magtataho, the community baker, the weaver from Ilocos, the small-scale cacao grower in Davao. In choosing them, you circulate dignity.
- Acts of service: help someone with their sari-sari store inventory, babysit a niece during a parent’s busiest week, drive someone home when taxis surge.
- Gifts that repair rather than accumulate: a mended dress, a sharpened knife, a refurbished appliance. Generosity that extends the life of what we already have.
This isn’t austerity. This is a reorientation toward what matters.
Where My Gifts Came From This Year
With this intention, I did much of my Christmas shopping at Mandeko Kito, Baguio’s annual craft bazaar and a cherished celebration of northern artistry. Walking through its stalls feels like stepping into a living tapestry of Cordilleran creativity. This year, I picked up paint-your-own matryoshka dolls — playful gifts for the young ones. I also bought handmade soaps from Amparo’s Apothecary, and exquisite hand-woven, hand-embroidered pieces from Revival Dye. This is an Abra-based artisanal clothing brand keeping the endangered tradition of indigo dyeing alive. These are gifts that carry lineage, craft, and regional pulse — culture that travels from one hand to another.
I also turned to Greens for Good, a farmer-led group in Benguet I’ve had the privilege of helping nurture. Their vegetable gift boxes — brimming with crisp, seasonal produce — are among the most meaningful gifts one can give. Each box is a direct line of support to the farmers who wake before sunrise. They coax life out of terraced earth battered by storms and fluctuating prices. They persist despite a system that rarely rewards them fairly. Gifting their harvest feels like placing gratitude directly into the hands that feed us. It is an affirmation of dignity, sustainability, and solidarity.
Among the first small enterprises on my list is Joy in a Bottle, a homegrown producer of essential oils crafted from pili, peppermint, turmeric, and lemongrass. These ingredients feel pulled straight from our mountains and lowlands. I’ve used their oils for years. They are rubbed into tired joints after long kitchen shifts, tucked into travel bags as quiet companions. Supporting them this season honors five years of quiet, dependable care — proof that Filipino brands can match global quality with heart.
I’m also gifting products from Beetanicals, a micro-producer operating from a lime and bee farm in Laguna. Their natural beauty line is fortified with propolis from stingless bees — nature’s own medicine chest. I’ve relied on their propolis for mouth sores, but I’ve also witnessed its power beyond my own small needs: a friend’s daughter’s eczema softening in days; another friend crediting their hair oil after chemotherapy. These are the kinds of small miracles that keep Filipino micro-businesses alive — when a product becomes not just an item, but a story passed hand to hand.
For my holiday table, my hams will come from Ted’s Laguna, run by Chef Gel Salonga-Datu. Their baked goods and cheesecakes have long carried the warmth of Southern Luzon. Their ham is old-fashioned sincerity: no shortcuts, no compromises. But beyond the food, it is their commitment to community I most admire. Ted’s is a pillar of the Slow Food movement in Laguna. They support farmers, strengthen local supply chains, and nurture small producers who feed us in more ways than one. Buying from them feels like participating in a network of care that our national systems have so often failed to uphold.
A Hard Year — Still Worth Honoring
We cannot pretend this is an easy Christmas. Too many households are choosing between groceries and tuition, between medicine and fuel. Too many small businesses are clinging to the margins. They are reshaping menus, tightening inventories, absorbing costs we can no longer pass on.
But perhaps celebration this year isn’t rooted in abundance — but in honesty.
In giving in ways that uplift rather than deplete.
In choosing joy that circulates within our islands.
Joy that nurtures our farmers, our artisans, our micro-entrepreneurs.
Joy that keeps our traditions alive.
The Quiet Gift
In a time when corruption has hollowed out our future, the most radical gift may be this: to give with intention — and to support the people who keep our foodways, craft, and small industries breathing.
We may not have the Christmas of easier years.
But we can have a Christmas rooted in meaning.
And sometimes, that is the gift that saves us.
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