Christmas in the Philippines: Simbang Gabi, parol and the longest season

The ber months

Filipinos call the last four months of the year the “ber months”: September, October, November and December. As soon as September begins, shopping centres play carols, radio stations switch to Christmas songs and the first lights go up. Every year the internet jokes that singer Jose Mari Chan, whose 1990 album “Christmas in Our Hearts” is the sound of the season, wakes up again on September 1.

Why so early? Christmas is the biggest holiday in a country where most people are Catholic, families are large, and many relatives work abroad and come home in December. A season this important deserves a long build-up.

The season at a glance

Parol, the Christmas star

The symbol of a Filipino Christmas is not the tree but the parol, a star-shaped lantern that stands for the star of Bethlehem. The classic one is a bamboo frame covered in thin coloured paper with two tails hanging down. Today you also see parols made of capiz shells, plastic and blinking LEDs, hanging in windows, on balconies and across whole streets.

The city of San Fernando in Pampanga is known as the Christmas capital of the Philippines. Every December it holds the Giant Lantern Festival, where neighbourhoods compete with lanterns several metres wide, lit by thousands of bulbs that pulse in patterns to music.

Simbang Gabi: nine dawn Masses

From December 16 to 24, churches hold Simbang Gabi, nine Masses usually around 4 or 5 in the morning (many parishes now add an evening Mass the night before). Churches overflow onto the street. A popular belief says that if you complete all nine, your wish will come true, so friends and couples often go together and keep count.

Half the fun is outside the church afterwards, where stalls sell breakfast in the cool morning air:

• Bibingka: a soft rice cake baked in a clay pot lined with banana leaves, with coals above and below, often topped with salted egg and cheese.
• Puto bumbong: purple sticky rice steamed in bamboo tubes, served with butter, brown sugar and grated coconut.
• Salabat: hot ginger tea, the perfect drink before sunrise.

Noche Buena on Christmas Eve

After the last Simbang Gabi or the late Mass on December 24, families sit down to Noche Buena, a feast that often begins around midnight. Relatives come from far away, the table is full, and presents are opened when the clock strikes twelve.

Monito monita: Secret Santa, Filipino style

Offices, schools and friend groups play monito monita (also called Kris Kringle). Names are drawn in November, and in the weeks before the Christmas party everyone gives their secret friend small gifts on a theme for each week: “something sweet”, “something soft”, “something that starts with the letter of your name”. The real gift and the big reveal come at the party. Want to run one? Here are our Secret Santa rules.

Carols and godparents

In December, children go from house to house singing carols, often with homemade instruments like a tambourine of flattened bottle caps on a wire. When the song ends they call out “Namamasko po!”, and the household gives them a few coins. If there is nothing to give, the playful answer is “Patawad!”, “forgive us!”.

On Christmas Day children visit their godparents, their ninong and ninang. They greet each one with the mano, gently pressing the elder’s hand to their forehead, and receive a gift or crisp new bills. With several godparents each, it can be a busy day.

Media Noche and a loud New Year

A week later comes Media Noche, the New Year’s Eve feast. Many families put twelve round fruits on the table, one for each month, for a year of plenty. People wear polka dots, because round shapes look like coins, and children jump at midnight in the hope of growing taller. The noise is the point: fireworks, horns, pots and pans, all to chase bad luck away.

Christmas from far away

Millions of Filipinos work abroad, and Christmas is when distance hurts most. Weeks ahead they send balikbayan boxes home, cardboard boxes packed with chocolates, clothes and toys that can take a month or two by sea. On the night itself, families gather around a phone for a video call so everyone is at the same table.

Messages matter just as much. One way to collect them is a Christmas tree of messages: share the link with your family and friends wherever they are, and everyone hangs a gift with a note on it. The messages stay sealed until Christmas Day, so they all open together, like the gifts at Noche Buena.

Useful phrases