yes, virginia, santa brings hopia

this was the realization that my 10-year-old cousin jason came home to on christmas eve at their home right after church.

noche buena dinner was spent at my aunt's house, where (aside from jason) the only other child in their family who still believes in the guy in a red suit is 7-year-old abigail. they had left milk and cookies for santa before going to church, and came back to see two stuffed bears, a letter for each of them, a webkins dog without the precious tag bearing the online "secret code"...and two pieces of eng bee tin hopia (mung bean cake).

now, everyone knows how jason is obsessed with eng bee tin hopia, specifically the "ube" (purple yam) flavor. in fact, whenever anyone in the family came from the philippines, all he really looks for is the hopia. he knows that i brought hopia from my recent trip to the philippines and had even left voicemail on my celfone not too long ago asking if i had more of the ube hopia.

his parents, upon seeing his speechless reaction to the ube hopia "from santa", innocently declared, "wow, santa knows you like hopia! he went to the philippines just to get you some!" in reality, my mom had given the hopia to his dad at work.

everyone else tried to play along, but his older siblings (teenagers) were laughing themselves silly at the hopia fiasco.

now, if i were 10 years old and this happened to me, either i'll believe that santa is also suffering from an economic recession and settled for hopia, my most favorite pastry, OR it's time to outgrow santa claus and realize that he was really just my parents all these years.

as for abigail, she was very disappointed by the fact that her webkins toy didn't come with the much-coveted secret code, which means she can't play with it on the webkins website. "that's the whole point!", she helplessly wailed. oh, and her webkins toy came in a wheat thins box (something they always see in their own kitchen)....which elicited more laughter from the older siblings. "santa's cheap!", they chuckled.

"santa's too obvious and uncreative," i thought. i think the dad was much to blame here. he played santa this year.

our christmas eve feast however, was very filling. my aunt made pancit molo, there were slices of coastal cheddar cheese in lieu of the queso de bola from manila which was also at the table, they had ordered pork barbecue, glazed ham, sweet and sour tilapia, buko pie and pandesal from jersey city; and i had made my filipino-style spaghetti.

my sister's birthday falls on christmas day itself, so we sang her a happy birthday, took pictures, and had her blow candles on her cookie cake sometime after midnight. my aunt's eldest daughter, andrea, spent her first christmas with her family as a college student. she did enjoy goofing off with her siblings, tying ribbons across their foreheads and pretending to be ninjas.

we went home at around 2am on christmas day, started opening gifts until 5am, then went to sleep until it was noon.

i wonder what santa will bring the kids next year. hopefully it won't be in a wheat thins box again. haha.