.celebration.

It's the day after Christmas and finally, I'm home! I spent Christmas Day on duty in Ward 16 of PGH. If not for the constant greetings of "Merry Christmas!" from people I ran into, yesterday felt much like any other ordinary day. I spent Christmas monitoring hypertensive postpartum patients, listening for almost nonexistent fetal heart sounds from about 20-week pregnant women, and extracting body fluids from people I barely know. I almost forgot it was Christmas. The rest of my family trooped to Pampanga as was our yearly tradition, and I wasn't there with them. That bummed me out a little.

We did get to have our own little celebration though. All of us interns and the residents of Service B brought food and drinks to share for dinner. So we all got together at around 9pm, stuffed our faces with the feast we managed to put together (and a feast it definitely was!), and laughed at each other as people took turns at the Magic Sing. It somehow made our duty feel a bit more festive.

However, given the choice, it still wouldn't have been the way I wanted to celebrate Christmas. Of course, who would want to spend it in a hospital anyway? But Christmas, to me, will never be about the food and the festivities and the parties that instantly appear at every corner once the season starts to make its presence felt.

Christmas, first and foremost, will always be about Jesus. It's a time of remembering, not only that He was born, but that He came to be our Saviour, our Redeemer. We celebrate not just His birth, but that He died and rose again to give us life. CHRISTmas will never be Christmas without CHRIST, after all. Christmas is the day of remembering the manifestation of the greatest LOVE of all... that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. That's why it should be Christmas everyday.

However, society established it as a special day that comes once every year... and given the rarity with which it occurs, it's a day that I would much rather spend with people I love. It's supposed to be a day when everyone is off work or school, and an opportunity to be together after a year of minding our own businesses.

I love little celebrations. I like making people's small victories feel like it's the best thing that could happen to them. You could have won an oustanding award, or just simply learned something new, I still want you to feel like you deserve a grand celebration for what happened. But it doesn't have to be grand at all. For me, being together in moments of joy is the best way to celebrate. When you get right down to it, I am not really a party person. I would rather have intimate moments - like getting together for coffee with few of my closest friends, a sweet date just walking along the beach (or, technically... Manila Bay.. hehe. Hello Dear!), or a quiet dinner with family - than go to a party where the music is blasting out of gigantic speakers and the alcohol is making people act weird (and stupid).

That was how I wanted to spend Christmas. I wanted a celebration where I could simply be with people I love.

Because Christmas is always about LOVE. It was inspired by LOVE and so let's celebrate it the way it was meant to be.

Let's celebrate it with much LOVE.

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I will be welcoming Year 2009 in the Labor Room and Delivery Room of PGH. Yup, I'm on duty again on the 31st of December. Great.

Consolation. I will be seeing the very first PGH baby of 2009. Wow.

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Miss you much Dear. Sana SQTT na tayo soon. ;)