When Christmas comes around, you can feel it in the thickness of the air. The way it shifts to lovely and crisp, slowly brushing against your skin. It’s as if the world finally stops for a moment, allowing us to bask in every bit of magic of the holidays. But for healthcare workers, time waits for no one. Their duty calls, and unlike the rest of us, it doesn’t take a holiday. The walls are white. The hallways are quiet. The wind is chilly as another day on the job begins on 

By the time December arrives, streets glow with lights, carols float through the air, and politicians roll out their annual greetings of “Maligayang Pasko sa lahat.”  But for millions of Filipinos, Christmas comes not with gifts or relief, but with the familiar weight of absence—no clean water, no decent roads, no classrooms repaired, no hospitals improved. In a season meant for giving, the poorest communities are left asking the same bitter question: where did the money go?

For Filipinos, Christmas is a special holiday that they celebrate with family or someone they love: the long-awaited reunions, adults giving gifts, silly party games, and a warm feast of Noche Buena that brings everyone together. While homes across the country glow with colorful parols, over 2.16 million Filipinos are spending their holidays thousands of miles away—packing their “balikbayan” boxes instead of gifts, sending videos instead of hugs, and celebrating Christmas thr