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Awake from a hectic Christmas Eve, meeting up with friends, meeting up with family, attending mass, and spending the opening minutes of Christmas with loved ones. I’m blessed, I know, and I can only be thankful for all the blessings that have been bestowed upon me.

But you know, I feel a deep longing that many Filipinos away from their homeland feel. A dual tugging of hearts, a gratitude to a nation that has given me so much, but great love for the nation that gave birth to me. Christmas is a time of great joy and of great sorrow for me, and I’m okay with this.

Today, I also thank you my dear friends for staying with me here in this corner of the internet. As you know I have been busy with Filipino Voices, such great compassionate individuals over there, patriotic writers, and I have this deep sense of duty to them and to the readers, to make it as successful as it can be. I am thankful that these writers constantly rekindle my love for my country and for my people.

The holidays is an accumulation of emotions, and I welcome these emotions with open arms. Love is the overwhelming emotion for me this Christmas morning, and as Christmas day is just about to wrap up in The Philippines, I on the other hand will start mine. I will relax today, reflect on the blessings that have been given to me, the most important of all will always be my relationships with friends and family.

I reflect a great deal on our fellow Filipinos that have so little this Christmas, the great many Filipinos who live under the umbrella of poverty, a tattered umbrella which we cannot ignore, nor should we ignore. I imagine a great many families who will have had a simple noche buena, whose happiness is anchored not in gifts but because the time they spend — it is with their family.

I reflect on what we should all be thankful for, and if we only knew the great many things we have that so many Filipinos could only wish and hope for, I think the tangible things we focus on like material gifts, don’t seem so tangible after all.

My dear friends, I hope you will have had a great Christmas, no matter if this was just another day for you, the important thing is, is that you experience the love this day symbolizes.

May God Bless us all, The Filipino people, and The Philippine Republic.