How to Make Traditional DIY Filipino Parols for Christmas
Liz and I grew up spending a lot of time around our Filipino relatives, but that doesn’t mean we felt super connected to our culture. And it wasn’t just us. None of our cousins or second cousins around our age could speak Tagalog. Most of us had never been to the Philippines. We ate Filipino foods at every party, and believed in some Filipino superstitions. When it comes to cultural traditions, it’s hard for me to say where our family’s specific ones ended and true Filipino ones began.
I didn’t even meet anyone, aside from my relatives, who were Filipino until I was 14. A school nearby had shut down, with my school absorbing the displaced students. All of a sudden, there were so many Filipinos around me. It was fun to see what things we had in common, from the way we were taught to think, to our thoughts on our culture. It helped give me a greater appreciation of my family. The things I once saw as weird and embarrassing became things that made me part of a bigger group.
Like my mom’s stupid Christmas lights. Every year we go all out decorating the front of our house with as much holiday cheer as we can. When we were young, my mom always put these red, green, and yellow stars in the window. They were made of painted shells and flashed different patterns all night long. My mom was super protective about these lights, and I can remember getting yelled at a lot for bumping into them. I wished we could have normal window lights like snowmen or stockings. The stars were weird. But they were also Filipino.
In the present day, Liz and I haven’t talked to our mom and the Filipino side of our family in years. After being disowned, we were left without the familial connection to our Filipino culture. So we had to seek it out ourselves and learn. We drove to Filipino neighborhoods to eat the foods of our childhood. We watched Crazy Rich Asians and were ecstatic to see Asian and Pacific Islander cultures that had so much in common with our own.
And I made these parols. I kind of missed these silly lights. Hanging them in the window this year for the first time since I was a teenager left such a light feeling in my chest. Bit by bit, we reclaim these little traditions. My children may not grow up around Filipino family like I did, but they will have all the Filipino traditions, along with German and American ones, that we can pass down to them.
If you’re looking to make your own, here are some of the supplies we used:
