Filipino Family Tradition

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Informational Essay Anderson_Jayden_English9_Informational Essay Final Draft Filipino Traditional Holiday Americans might view the Christmas holiday as a commercially attractive period, the Filipinos have managed to maintain deep tradition for the Christmas holiday (James, 1). Such traditions include the holding of morning masses referred to as the Simbang Gabi or the Misa de Gallo. Our Christmas celebrations are closely related with specific traditions and rituals. The Philippines is one of the two main Christian countries in the Asian continent. Therefore, the Christmas holiday is one of our biggest celebrations in the archipelago. In fact, the Philippines is the country that has the longest Christmas celebration around the globe. Actually, you can hear Christmas carols being played in shops as early as September. In the Philippines and in Filipino households around the world, formal Christmas celebrations start on December 16th. On this day, we attend the first of nine morning masses. The last mass we go to is on Christmas day. We have celebrations that are carried out until the first Sunday of January. This is when we celebrate Epiphany, the feast of the Three Kings. The Simbang Gabi is one of the most unique features of the Philippine Christmas. These nine-day masses are held at the crack of dawn most at four o’clock in the morning. This tradition of holding the masses at this hour is believed to be as a result of the Spanish colonial period when the celebrations coincided with the harvesting of rice. Therefore, the farmers had to finish the Simbang Gabi before they were needed on the farms. In spite of Filipinos relocating to urban areas nowadays they have carried with them the tradition of holding the masses at four o’clock in the morning even though they don’t have farms to

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