(Last year I started a special Christmas blog series entitled 25 Days of Christmas. For this year I wanted to do it again. If the Christmas song has 12 days of Christmas, I have my longer version – 25 Days of  Christmas Year 2.)

On the 24^th day of Christmas, Christmas celebration is about to start.

I prepared the food for our Christmas Eve Noche Buena. This has been the scenario since I was in high school. I started helping in the kitchen with my Mom. Eventually I learned how to prepare our family’s favourite – macaroni salad and spaghetti. These two are always present in our dining table on Christmas Eve (typical Pinoy family).

Bakit nga ba spaghetti at macaroni salad ang handa ng karamihang pamilyang Pinoy?  I don’t know why. Some families have pancit and bibingka (which I think a truly Pinoy-style).

This Christmas, I prepared the macaroni salad in the morning and cooked the pasta and spaghetti sauce (Filipino style, yun ang gusto ng mga pipol sa bahay eh) late in the afternoon. I also prepared fresh vegetables salad (my family love the lettuce and cucumber). My brother already volunteered to cooked the chicken lechon and ham (the ham was perfect) so I had some leeway to have some siesta in the afternoon.

Sabi nga ng tita ko basta ang pagkaing niluto ng may pagmamahal lalong sumasarap. I guess she’s right. There’s actually no secret or special recipe to the dishes I cooked, but my family enjoyed the food during our Noche Buena. I don’t consider as a tedious chores cooking and preparing the food for Christmas. In fact I enjoyed each moment of my stay in the kitchen. This is one of the gifts I could give to my family which cannot be bought by money. This is a priceless gift!

Before we started our Christmas celebration, I was glad to hear that my father and my sister, together with her stepchildren would attend the Christmas night mass. I was happy because I could attend the evening mass with them. It has been years since we last attended an evening mass on Christmas, though we used to attend the morning Christmas mass. I love to maintain the Christmas habits my family used to do when my sibling and I were still kids. We used to go to church and go home and celebrate the sumptuous meals. But things changed on our growing up years. When my brother and sister got married, they had their own celebration in their respective home.

I know time will come when I will celebrate my Christmas without my father and my siblings around me, but with my own family. But heck, that may be still 2 or 3 years from now. For now, I will enjoy every moment of my Christmas Eve with my family.

I hope all families will be complete and merry as they celebrate this year’s Christmas Noche Buena! May we all enjoy not just the food but also the presence of our family members and loved ones this Christmas!

Happy eating everyone!!!

DB