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Do not tell me Christmas
has come with September,
while monsoon skies are breaking
and the rivers leave their beds.
Do not hang your blinking lanterns
where the flood has reached the windows,
and drown the cries of neighbors
with your merry Christmas songs.
No, it is not Christmas yet.
Not because the month is wrong,
not because December
has not appeared upon the page.
Christmas does not come
because the malls have changed their music,
or because someone has decided
it is time to sell us joy.
Christmas came one night
to two weary strangers
knocking upon doors
that would not open.
A woman heavy with child,
a man asking only for shelter—
and a town so full of people
that it somehow had no room.
No, it is not Christmas yet
while there is still no room.
Not while someone stands outside
in the rain and in the dark.
But open one door,
make one dry place,
share one roof, one meal, one light—
and Christmas may begin.
For Christmas is also
a family running in the night,
a frightened mother,
a father leading them away,
a child hunted by a ruler
who thought himself a god,
a Herod who would murder children
rather than surrender power.
Do not make Christmas harmless.
God came among us homeless.
God became a refugee.
God entrusted himself
to the mercy of strangers.
And heaven found its dwelling
not in the palace of a king
but among the poor and the beasts.
There, somehow, there was room—
room for shepherds smelling of the fields,
room for foreigners following a star,
room for angels and animals,
for heaven and earth,
for kings kneeling beside peasants,
all gathered around a child
who owned nothing at all.
And perhaps that is why
there had to be a star:
because the world was dark.
Not a thousand Christmas lights,
not glitter strung across the streets—
only one small light
telling those who were searching:
Go this way. There is room here.
So no,
it is not Christmas in September
simply because we have begun
to play the Christmas songs.
But perhaps Christmas can begin
even now—
when a school becomes an evacuation center,
when a parish opens its doors,
when a family moves closer together
to make room for another family,
when someone wades through muddy water
carrying food instead of gifts,
when dry ground is shared
with those who have nowhere left to stand.
Then sing.
Sing because a door has opened.
Sing because the stranger was welcomed.
Sing because the frightened child
has somewhere safe to sleep.
And in a flooded barangay,
under a September sky
with no star visible through the rain,
perhaps God will find a home again.
Not because we played
“Let’s sing Merry Christmas.”
But because, at last,
we made space.
