Christmas Choreography and other Subaltern Responses to Religious Hegemony in the Philippines
The Christmas season in the Philippines is the longest in the world, and purportedly the happiest—this happiness, however, can be weaponized. The elites in the Philippines (politicians, warlords, and the like) have engineered a “culture of giving” in Christmas that serves to entrench their position as the “givers” above the masses. However, a CNN profile that extols the jolly times in Filipino Christmas decided to have a somewhat sobering epilogue about how the victims of a recent typhoon often “relied on Catholic charities to provide them with some Christmas spirit”.