Parol making in the spirit of the season

It truly is quite an experience celebrating Christmas in the Philippines, especially if you are a kid.  There's the early morning masses where you get up real early, then have hot pan de sal with butter oozing all over, or puto bumbong afterwards.  The anticipation of the special day when Jesus as an infant would appear on the Belen on Christmas Day, and the Christmas lantern that would glide its way across the Church to where the manger is... it's all so special.  And in school, we do arts and crafts, and make Parol, which we have only during this time of the year!


Making these Christmas lanterns do bring me back to those carefree and wonderful times back in the Philippines.  And when we had a Parol Workshop one weekend here in Wellington, it was just so much fun and, in a way, a sentimental experience for me.



The paper lanterns are grade school stuff, but it was an activity that was happily shared amongst the kids and the grandparents!  The others engaged themselves to the more traditional, but challenging, Parols with the bamboo sticks and colourful cellophane cover.

This is the first ever Parol Workshop that our group BarkadahaNZ did, and hopefully there will be another one in the future.




We have 3 Parols hanging in our home!  It's such a unique and colourful tradition which we must definitely pass on to the next generation.