A Different Christmas Season This Year

I was at the mall two weeks ago, grocery shopping (I do it alone these days, since Mama can't go out). While devouring a plateful of bacon rice, pesto pasta, and grilled chicken at the food court, I noticed that the mall was already playing Christmas songs already. It made me think of how Christmas would be this year, considering recent events.

By December, our house would hopefully be 50% completed, which would mean we'll be having Christmas dinner (and New Year) at my nanay-nanayan's house, where we are currently staying while the house is wrecked. We've already set-up our Christmas tree but it looked puny against the scale of nanay's house. For sure, our holiday season will be spent much much simpler than the past years. This year, instead of being Santa Claus to the whole extended family and friends and officemates, I'll only be shopping presents for a very very select few--my thirteen godchildren specifically. I'll definitely stick to my budget and I'm already considering going to Divisoria or Greenhills instead of Megamall or Glorietta, even just to save a few hundred bucks. Mama would already be on her fourth or fiftch chemotherapy cycle by then too. We'll have to properly schedule our visits to the malls during non-peakhours, so Mama can avoid the germ-riddled crowds. Definitely, no watching Metro Manila Film Festival entries since Mama's immune system shouldn't be in enclosed spaces with other people. Hmm. WIth malling not that much of an option now, I don't really have that much to work on as far as holiday activites go. Hmm.