c. 2006 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Jo Anne Gonzaga, a petite 40-year-old migrant worker from the Philippines, considers herself blessed to be living in the Holy Land. But this year, she will be spending Christmas taking care of her elderly employer while her husband and three teenage daughters celebrate the holiday back home.

Before Gonzaga left her life in the Philippines seven years ago, she viewed working in Israel as a chance not only to make money for her family but to personally acquaint herself with the Israel she had only read about in the Bible.

But like the estimated 35,000 other Filipino workers in Israel, Gonzaga discovered that in the modern Jewish state, Dec. 25 is just another day on the calendar _ one that comes and goes with scarcely a string of lights or a Christmas tree.

Back in the Philippines, starting in September, “the city lights are glittering already, the shopping malls are full of the blinking lights and the spirit of Christmas,” Gonzaga said. “I really miss that. Here I don’t see lights, I don’t see like what I am seeing back home.”

The pronounced absence of a Christmas spirit in the land that gave birth to Christianity is at least in part a reflection of the size of the Christian population in Israel. Census figures from 2000 show the Filipino population here is 93 percent Christian, but Christians make up just 2 percent of the Israeli population, according to data from last December.

The streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv _ which attract most of the Filipino workers in the country, the majority of them female caregivers _ show little sign of the impending holiday, yet some pockets of Christmas preparations can be found.

Several Filipinas, for instance, spent a recent day off browsing items like a Santa Claus doll playing a saxophone and a silver table-top tree inside Tel Aviv’s sprawling central bus station, which also functions as a mall and a haven for foreign workers.

Helen Rosario, a 26-year-old caregiver from the Philippines, said the display reminded her of the festive traditions back home. “Why don’t you have Christmas trees here?” she wanted to know. Rosario has Christmas Day off _ as do many Filipino workers in Israel _ and plans to spend the day at church and eating a holiday meal with friends.

“It’s sad because we don’t celebrate (Christmas) with family members,” said Rosario. Switching to the Hebrew she has picked up in her 16 months in the country, she added, “No mother, no father, no grandfather, no grandmother, no sister. Just friends.”

In Jerusalem, some 50 Filipinos gathered at the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, a church and pontifical institute, on the first Sunday of Advent for an extended day of pre-Christmas worship. Some attended a Mass that opened with the Filipino song “O Hesus, Hilumin Mo” (“Oh Jesus, Heal Us”), while others participated in a Bible study session conducted in a mixture of Tagalog and English, where a preacher exhorted his listeners to “watch and pray for the day of Jesus Christ’s return.”

The Rev. Angelo Ison, a Franciscan priest who was born in the Philippines and has been living in Israel since 1991, said Filipina workers in Israel tend to be troubled by loneliness and insecurity in the run-up to Christmas. Many _ like Gonzaga, who sends home $600 to $700 every month to pay for her daughter’s nursing school _ have left their children behind in order to give them better lives. Ison calls it “the martyrdom of the Filipino mothers who are here.”

But while the workers in Israel will largely be apart from their families on Christmas, that doesn’t mean they will be celebrating it alone.

Busloads of Filipinos will head to Bethlehem for Christmas Mass at Jesus’ birthplace; Ison estimates that 3,000 attended last year. In Jerusalem, there will be house-to-house Christmas caroling. Across the country, friends will get together over rice, pork and vegetables, and Filipinos will be calling home _ or at least sending cell phone text messages if the lines are busy.

Even those who will be spending their Christmas working will still have a chance to celebrate. Gonzaga is president of the Federation of Filipino Communities in Israel, an umbrella group bringing together 17 Filipino social organizations. Her group is planning a Christmas party in a Jerusalem restaurant for the Saturday night before the holiday. She hopes to raise $2,000 to buy rice, canned goods and other relief items for victims of a deadly typhoon that hit the Philippines earlier this month.

Christmas in the Holy Land often revolves around the here-and-now of modern Israel. But thoughts of absent children and countrymen in distress are never far away, on Christmas and every day.

Said Myrna Lowie, a caregiver who has been here since 1994, “I have to provide for my kids.”

KRE/PH END KORDOVA

Editors: To obtain photos of Filipinos celebrating Christmas in Israel, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.