A new year filled with joy, peace is our hope

By Ludy Astraquillo Ongkeko, Ph.D.

Greetings to all!

It is our hope that your Christmas turns out to be a blessed one, and a new year filled with joy is another hope!

There is nothing like the near conclusion of another 12 months to remind us of a myriad of events. Likewise, there is that ever-realistic announcement that a new year is descending on mankind.

These past several weeks have been of marked significance to the exponents of world peace. Leaders from all over came together in Paris to do what could possibly be achieved in regard to global warning and curbing emissions since the ill-fated
Copenhagen Summit of 2009. Ties were renewed as negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed to limit green house emissions that marked turning points in more than 20 years of efforts to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

With the 16th month of the millennium approaching, it underscores the reason and the season to be happy, as we wish all readers of The Filam that the year ahead will be a happy and peaceful one.

Let us all join in unison that the spirit of Christmas will go on and on because it is ageless. Christmas reminds us that it is a time for love.

It also lets us know that it is a time for sharing and remembering. Were it to be spent in that manner, then the season isn’t just a season which concludes with the flip of another calendar year.

Each time mankind goes through another holiday season, this writer likes to think that we should consider Christmas as not just one season that is over and done with. We should keep our hope burning that it is the season looked forward to in a different manner, one whose spell will last long enough for us to cherish and love.

We suppose most of us in this part of the globe cannot help but allow our thoughts to drift away to our original home when we think of the holiday seasons celebrated on these shores. Let us permit ourselves this one luxury to indulge in nostalgia. There is nothing wrong with reminiscing, as we are wont to doing when events of this nature
surface.

When we were still in our birthplace, the populace waited for a whole 11 months for Christmas. We’d like to believe that the rich or poor alike considered it the most awaited season there.

In a way, we are not that distant from our norms and our mores. We do remember our homeland. We also believe remembrances and sentiments were made more emphatic during the past several weeks as we started our unique “Simbang Gabi.”

If we did share Christmas, we did via our recollections and our aspirations that we shall see the homeland of our dreams emerge from its present problems on the road to more progress. This, we shall see as part of our tomorrows. This, we pray for. This, we hope for, as we are on the threshold of 2016, closer than ever to the realization of peace on our frontiers.

May 2016 be a full year of bliss to all mankind!

Peace on Planet Earth!

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