It's over.

It’s now 37 minutes past midnight here in Manila. December 26, 2006.

It’s official. Christmas is finally over. Gone. Kaput. The end.

The in-laws have left. And so did the pesky carolers. The rib eye steak, the waldorf salad and pasta carbonara are now a thing of the past along with the Fiesta ham and ube halaya (purple yam). By the time I’m writing this, all that’s left in the fridge are a half-empty bottle of Chiraz, some chocolate-chip cookies and Washington red apples. Thank God there’s no fruitcake.

And so it goes.

Another countdown begins. 364 days to go ‘till Christmas 2007. Time to shed off the extra calories gained and write the mandatory annual New Year’s resolutions. It’s also during this time that people begin pondering, “I wonder what’s waiting for me next year?” “Will I finally meet Mr. Right?” “Will I finally get my break?” “Can we survive?” “What to do with this damn fruitcake?” Questions that are often kept inside and are somehow, almost always, answered by well-wisher’s clichés. One friend even had the answer for everything with a single text message. It reads, “Merry Christmas! May you have a lot of food to eat, a prosperous career, a blooming love life, and a successful new year”. Well, almost everything except the fruitcake.

What lies ahead maybe uncertain, but it is with this uncertainty that life becomes a year-long challenge. Christmas may now be over, gone, along with the text barrage of well-wishers, friends and relatives spreading good tidings, Christmas trees, mistletoes and tinsels back into storage, but the prospect of waiting for 364 days before it’s here once again is proof that people have faith.

The faith that even if we don’t get what we want in the year 2007, even if Mr. Right doesn’t come along and job promotions doesn’t happen, even if we barely survived, there’s always 364 more days to look forward to. It’s human nature. We climb and fall. We leap. We hope. We wait.

For 364 days.

And so, to my friends and family and fellow bloggers, I hope you get what you want this Christmas and the coming New Year. In case you don’t, here’s a message from the bottom of my heart:

“Merry Christmas! May you have a lot of food to eat, a prosperous career, a blooming love life, and a successful new year!”

I still don’t have an answer to that fruitcake though.