Things I love about Christmas! Reminiscing my Childhood

I guess every child is excited about Christmas!. Why? Because traditionally, their Godfather and Godmother are obliged to give some gifts, either toys or money to them.

In my case, here are the things I love about Christmas when I was a kid.

Carroling.

Second week of december, we are starting to collect bottle caps already or what we call in our mother tongue (tagalog) as "tansan".

This is how it looks like:

Image source

We roam around each garbage place, and stores day by day to find and collect bottle caps around.

When we have enough number of it already (20 caps or more), we make tambourine using it.

What we do is, we put a hole in the middle of each cap using a nail. Once done making hole to each of the bottle caps, we will then find some wire and form a circle using it. After that, we will the wire in the hole of each caps.

Finish product:

And then we will form a group of three or more. When we don't have the DIY tambourine, what we also do is find a CAN or a Gallon container and then pick up a stick and make a sound using it (like a drum).

And then we will wait for December 16th (the official start of "Simbang Gabi"). Each night from December 16th to December 24th, we will go to each houses, sing any Christmas carol that we know and share our angelic voices (charot!) with them.

But then given the poor life in the province, we're lucky enough to bring home 5 pesos each for each night of our caroling because most of the time what you will hear from them is the famous word "Patawad!"

Monito Monita.

Did you also experienced this? Two weeks before the Christmas Vacation at school, our teacher usually organize this kind of exchanging gift. We will basically think of any code names we want, and tell it to our teacher. The teacher will then make a drop box with our code names in it.

Each one of us will be asked to pick one and whoever that codename we picked will be our Baby. Baby as in each week or day (depending on the mechanics), the teacher will set the "Something" or the "Theme" of the gift that we need to give to our Baby.

Let's say for example this week's theme is "Something Long". We need to think of a thing that corresponds to "something long", wrap it around with old newspapers or any scratch papers and put it in the designated area in out classroom.

The challenge in this monito-monita gift is that finding out who your baby is. So each one of us, to be able to hide our identity, we usually pick the items with our codenames from the designated area when no one is around. We need to make sure that no one is around.

During the Christmas Party, we will need to bring our Final Gift to our Monito or Monita. We should comply with the minimum amount set by our teacher.

The "code-name reveal" happens in the Christmas Party during the actual exchange gift.

It's kind of fun, I remember when I was in second year high-school, I always receive double gift. Why? My classmate who has crush on me discovered my code-name and each day, he keeps on dropping a gift in our designated gift dropping area (haba ng hair ko diba?).

Christmas Party.

I guess, this is one of the most awaited moment in school during my schooldays. Parents ought to buy new clothes for us which we will wear during our Christmas party. So the school Christmas Party became the venue for the students to have new clothes and shoes.

I am excited to attend the Christmas Party at school back then because I am so excited for the exchange gift portion!. I am so excited to receive a gift from my classmate. I just so love the thrill and suspense while opening the gifts really :).

How about you? What are the things that make you excited about Christmas during your childhood days? I will love to read it out in the comment section below.