The Miracle of Christmas-sang by Little Rita Faye. The song that I love very much since when I was a kid. Click and listen the link- video below. This is the song that relates me to "Simbang Gabi".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnt3G7lSpUw#t=42
When the Christmas season would begin, it was customary to hold novenas in the evenings, but the priests saw that the people would attend despite the day's fatigue. As a compromise, the clergy began to hold Mass in the early dawn when the land would still be dark before the people went out to toil in the fields again. The custom spread and it evolved into a distinctly Philippine tradition to attend Mass at a rather early time.
History:
The tradition of midnight mass on Christmas Eve was first chronicled by Egeria, the Galician woman who went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land around 381–384. She witnessed how the early Christians of Jerusalem honored the Christmas mystery with a midnight vigil at Bethlehem. This was followed by a procession with torchlight to Jerusalem, arriving at the Church of the Resurrection at dawn.
Half a century later, Pope Sixtus III, inspired by the midnight vigil, instituted the practice of a midnight mass after the cockcrow in the grotto-like oratory of the famed Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. There are discrepancies, however, with the exact time of the cockcrow due to the fact that the ancient Romans set it at the start of the day.
In 1587, the head monk from the Convent of San Agustin Acolman, Fray Diego de Soria, petitioned the Pope to allow holding the mass outdoors because the church could not accommodate the large number of attendees at the evening celebration.
Misa de Gallo or Misa Aguinaldo:
In the Philippines, a predominantly catholic religion, they called it "Simbáng Gabi" ("night Mass"), is the Filipino version of the Misa de Aguinaldo or Misa de Gallo (literally translates to "Rooster’s or dawn masses") and traditionally begins on December 16 and ends on December 24. The celebration is held at around four o’clock in the morning. Pope Sixtus V ordered the mass be heard before sunrise since it was the harvest season, and the farmers needed to be in the fields or farms right after the celebration. This is the most important Filipino Christmas tradition.
These nine dawn Masses are also considered as a Novena by the Catholic and Aglipayan faithful’s. This is a practice of performing nine days of private or public devotion to obtain special graces. A well-known belief by Filipinos is that if a devotee completed all nine days of the Simbáng Gabi, a request made as part of the novena may be granted. This centuries-old custom is still popular to this day.
Similar to the Spanish tradition of lighting houses with small oil lamps on Christmas Eve, Filipinos adorn their homes with colorful star-shaped lanterns called paról. This is believed to have originally been used by worshipers to light their way to church in the mornings, as well as to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem. That’s why many lanterns of varied sizes are also displayed inside the church.
This is what struck me to feel the nostalgia when I was yet a little boy, in our place at Bacuag, Surigao del Norte when Misa de Gallo or dawn mass started, a loud but so solemn Christmas music were played that reverberated the whole community to back up the church bell ringing as if to entice the parishioners and invite them to attend the Misa de Gallo. In the culmination of mass, on the 9th mass would be held on Christmas eve where our eyes, the children’s attention were focused on the live shooting stars (bisayan version “padagan sa bitoon”), where the three big parols or colorful star-shaped lanterns were traveling or shooting fast from the entrance of the church to the altar where the Belen was located to be done during the proclamation part of the mass. As we were told by our elders, the three stars symbolized the 3 Kings Melchor, Gaspar and Baltazar.
After mass, Filipino families share in various traditional Christmas foods. Bibingka, (rice cake, cooked using coals on top and under), and puto bumbong (purple-colored rice pastry, seasoned with grated coconut and brown sugar) are two of the most popular of these delicacies, and suman or "bodbod" in bisaya while tsokolate (hot chocolate drink made from local cacao beans) and salabat (ginger tea) are sought-after breakfast drinks.
Source: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,http://en.wikipedia.org
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