WE have heard it said that a crisis is like a magnifying glass. It enlarges our understanding of our helplessness and helps us see clearly our need for God.
Indeed, the year 2020 saw a lot of Filipinos suffering from one crisis after another. From Taal Volcano’s eruption in January, which resulted in the loss of livelihoods and buried once productive agricultural land in volcanic ash, to the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic that soon followed, which has claimed over 9,000 lives in the country so far and sent our economy into a tailspin, to the powerful typhoons that left vast sections of the Philippines in ruins—it seems we Filipinos have seen death and destruction on a truly biblical scale this year.
Amid these crises, we saw our congressional leaders apathetically vying for plum posts, in the process practicing the politics of division, hate, mudslinging and muckraking.
We saw the double-edged nature of the government’s wars against communism and illegal drugs claim lives, drawing complaints of impunity and human-rights violations.
Yet, despite all these bad things that happened to us in 2020, hope has not diminished among many Filipinos.
The latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed 91 percent of adult Filipinos are welcoming 2021 with hope instead of fear.
Pulse Asia’s November 2020 Ulat ng Bayan survey also showed 91 percent of Filipino adults are still optimistic about their prospects in 2021.
IOptions Ventures’ nationwide online survey, called Sukat ng Bayan 2020, showed that while 50 percent of those polled said their Christmas is sadder this year, 80 percent are still hopeful for 2021.
In his homily during Christmas Eve mass, Pope Francis said the birth of Christ is a gift from God that brings people hope and courage in troubled times.
This seems especially true in the Philippines, the only Christian nation in Asia.
Filipinos dare to be optimists even in these trying times. We see more hope in times of despair. We see more redemption when we’re down and out.
Optimism has always been the majority sentiment among Filipinos when welcoming the New Year. Overwhelming majorities of the population across geographic areas and socioeconomic classes express hope, not fear or apprehension when a new year arrives.
Not even the pandemic, the typhoons or the recent earthquakes could have changed our hopeful mood. We are just happy, hopeful people by nature, even after being hit by one crisis after another. We are able to celebrate Christmas no matter the circumstances. Hope always wins.
As a line from the film The Shawshank Redemption goes: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
There’s something truly valiant, beautiful and inspiring in our unwillingness to surrender our hope that things will eventually turn out for the better.
The survivors of all these crises inspire us too with their unsinkable spirit and by their very optimism. Many have lost their loved ones and their homes, everything they hold dear, and yet they can still see redemption in the immediate horizon. They can still celebrate Christmas and find things to be thankful for.
Even those who naturally felt fear, anger, confusion and grief because of what befell them can tell stories of hope. They have not sunk into deadly, debilitating despair. They have not allowed hate and bitterness to diminish them.
Hope and redemption amid tragedy—is there a better Christmas message than this?
The survivors remind us of what should matter most in the celebration of Christmas: family and friends, people giving and sharing themselves, the sense of shared sacrifice, the love that survives after everything has been taken away.
It is easy to lose the significance of Jesus’s birth when we have everything we need and want. But the life of Jesus, who was born of peasant parents, in an animal’s stall, who would eventually be crucified between two thieves, tells us that his place is and will always be for the least, the lost and the last in society.
Perhaps it is not so ironic that Christmas is most meaningful to those who have nothing and have lost everything. Perhaps that is what Christmas is truly about after all.