Here in the Netherlands, Christmas plays second fiddle to Sinterklaas, which is on the 6th of December. This means that any form of Christmas decorations are nowhere to be seen until after December 6.

By Filipino standards, that’s just way too late in the game. After all, ours is a nation where Christmas jingles begin ring-ting-ting-a-linging in September. I’m not quite that hardcore, but by the third week of November, my inner Christmas junkie was rattling its cage and howling to be unleashed.

And so it was with a star shining bright that we cried to our entire neighborhood: Christmas is here! Oh and yes, we’re early. But we’re Filipino!

I would have loved to hang up a traditional parol. And I have a husband who actually knows how to make one (thank you, Ateneo Grade School). But do you know how hard it is to find long bamboo sticks in Holland… in winter, nonetheless?

So we had to settle for these punched paper stars, one for each window facing the street. It’s not really settling, though, because I love them. They make such pretty reflections against the glass.

One of our big debates while preparing for the move to Amsterdam was whether or not to take our plastic Christmas tree with us. “Who needs plastic? We’ll finally be able to get a real live tree!” was the argument against plastic. “But… you never know!” was the (rather weak) counter-argument.

Guess which side won?

Surprisingly, “you never know” won the day. So this is a plastic tree, sorry. There were no Christmas trees to be found before December, and waiting would have messed up our already-delayed Pinoy Christmas timeline. So up went the plastic tree, gussied up with a sparkly new string of LED lights… that said “rice lights” on the box. I guess you can’t separate a Filipino from his rice.

All the fresh trees came out last Monday, December 6… less than two weeks before our flight home. So, too late the hero, as they say. It wouldn’t have made sense for us to spring for a real tree, enjoy it for 10 days, leave it for three weeks, and come home to a dried mess of needles on the floor. I see them on practically every street corner now and I feel like they’re mocking me. Che!

Back to those rice lights. We had an extra string of lights (can you say over-enthusiastic buying?) so I got Marlon to cram it into a vintage glass jar I picked up at the Queen’s Day flea market. That’s how we work often: I’m concept, he’s execution. Or as he likes to say, I’m digital and he’s analog.