In November, Christmas Is Just A Few Steps Away...
Maybe it starts with the air shifting before anyone dares to say it out loud. I feel it every year as soon as November arrives, like this quiet announcement that something in me is stretching toward a familiar light. The mornings still wake warm, but the breeze comes with a softness that does not belong to the rest of the year, as if the sky remembers that even in a tropical country we deserve a little coolness. I walk through my days sensing how the season settles into my skin, how it reorders my movements, how it slows me down just enough to remind me that I grew up believing in this time of year and even now I still do. There is a kind of emotional memory in November, a recognition that things can be fragile and joyful at the same time, that our lives can be precarious and still find room to open their windows to something gentler.
Before anything becomes official, the sounds give it away. Music starts slipping into everyday life in that almost playful way it has here, like it knows it has permission to take over. I do not wait for December to let it happen. I hear the familiar melodies showing up in stores and buses and houses where someone is cooking something that smells like childhood. What always moves me is the voices of children singing the old songs, their faces lit by a kind of innocence that feels nearly impossible to protect but somehow still survives. Their rhythms travel through the streets with this small stubborn hope attached to them. Even when everything else in the country feels heavy, their voices cut through that weight with something simple and honest. And I have realized that part of being an adult here is making sure that they get to keep that light for as long as life allows it.
Later in the month, the light changes in a way that never stops surprising me. The evenings stretch themselves without asking, folding the day into a longer night that seems designed for gathering. That darkness is never cold enough to hurt, but just cool enough to make people want to stand closer, talk longer, linger a bit before heading home. I always feel a shift inside myself during these nights, a need to observe the city with softer eyes. I see families carrying bags of decorations even if they are reusing what they had last year and the year before that. I see people pulling chairs out to the sidewalks because nothing about this season feels meant to be lived behind closed doors. I see neighbors who barely speak during the year suddenly greeting each other with a warmth that appears as naturally as the breeze. And while none of this changes the deeper problems we know too well, it does something to the texture of our days, something that makes the struggle feel less solitary.
Sometimes the weight of everything threatens to break through the surface. November is not magic. It does not erase the constant tension running underneath the country or the uncertainty that ties itself to so many parts of everyday life. But I have learned that this month invites a certain kind of resilience that only makes sense here. We choose to create celebration even when the circumstances argue against it. We decorate our homes even if the lights flicker. We plan meals even if ingredients are unpredictable. We make space for joy because joy is not a luxury here, it is a necessity. And when I look at the children around me the small cousins the siblings the neighbors kids I understand why we insist so fiercely on keeping this season alive. They deserve a memory of magic that is not crushed by everything they will eventually learn about the world. And we deserve the reminder that we are still capable of giving that to them.
Across all of this, November becomes a kind of threshold. I feel myself stepping into it with an awareness that carries both sweetness and ache. I think about how these traditions have shaped me, how this culture holds together pieces of warmth even in the teeth of instability, how we turn music and faith and family into shields without calling them that. There is something profoundly human in the way we prepare for December long before the calendar tells us to, as if we are all agreeing silently that hope needs time to settle. By the time Christmas finally arrives, I am already full of that slow building anticipation, not for gifts or celebrations, but for the feeling of belonging to something that has survived with me. This season asks me to remember who I was as a child, who I am now, and who I still want to be. And every year, without fail, I find myself grateful that November gives me that space.