ILOILO'S CELEBRATION OF CHRISTMAS

The Christmas Tree of Hope

Christmases in our schools come and go, with all its givens:  the parties, the exchange gifts, well-wishes, outreach...

This year we wanted to do something different.  To express our solidarity to the larger community through an active and collaborative work, something that will not only touch the hearts of our students, but give hope to others...something too that is done in collaboration with a wider network.  This way, hopefully, the educative community will begin to see “family in a wider context.”

We decided to collaborate with the giant media network, ABS-CBN and put up a Christmas Tree of Hope.  In this joint venture, the school puts up a Christmas Tree, and ABS-CBN supplies stars in multiple-colors.  The stars can be purchased for ten pesos a piece.  Anyone who purchases a star gets to write a Christmas wish, and the star is hung on the tree.  All proceeds from the stars, together with all the other schools that have decided to participate in this endeavour will go to buying foodstuff and other needs for five impoverished barangays in Iloilo City.

On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, the school launched CHJ’s Christmas Tree of Hope.  The significance of the date of launching was not lost on parents, students, faculty and staff.  And so it was that stars began to be hung on the tree, and before we knew it, the tree was no longer bare.  Everyone took part in this project, including the parents.  On December 18, in the 5:30 a.m. Misa de Gallo celebrated by Fr. Nene Sinoy, the Christmas Tree of Hope was blessed.

Total collection amounted to P 20,200.  We were happy that many people could be helped, but this was not all.  What was heartening were the messages, prayers and wishes of those who wrote on their stars.  The wishes did not have to do with selfish desires of having more things.  Instead, almost everyone wished for a better world, where families would have enough to eat, a roof to shelter them, where justice and peace reigned, and where under God’s heaven, one day, we can truly claim to be “God’s family.”