Okay, okay— before anything else, I should probably address the very confident promise I made about blogging every day. (I said it with conviction). I believed in myself. I probably even imagined myself sitting somewhere aesthetic with coffee, effortlessly producing thoughtful posts as though consistency were simply a personality trait I could activate. Then real life arrived and reminded me that writing every single day requires, among other things, actually having the time and energy to write every single day. So yes, the “daily” part disappeared rather quickly. Consider this my formal admission that ambition sometimes writes cheques the calendar cannot cash.

What I did not forget, though, were the stories waiting inside my camera roll, and one of my favourites from that Christmas deserves to escape photo storage. It involved Birmingham, a German Christmas Market, far too much food, an impressive number of photographs and our friend Jona, who had committed the terrible offence of deciding to move to London. Technically, it was her leaving do. Emotionally, we treated it as both a celebration of her next chapter and an opportunity to accuse her of abandoning us. We were genuinely happy for her, completely supportive of her plans and also perfectly comfortable calling her isang malaking taksil. Good friendships have range.

Jona was the first in our little circle to make that move, and I think that was why her leaving felt significant. When you build a life abroad with people who are also figuring things out as they go, you get used to having a familiar group nearby. You work strange shifts, complain about British weather, celebrate birthdays, share food, survive homesickness and gradually create routines together. Then one person says, “I’m moving to London,” and suddenly everyone remembers that adult friendships come with careers, opportunities, different cities and inconvenient postcodes. Of course we wanted her to go where she would be happy. We simply preferred to express that support through affectionate bullying.

Birmingham German Christmas Market

So we went to Birmingham German Christmas Market, because nothing says emotional farewell quite like bratwurst beneath fairy lights.

December in Birmingham knows how to put on a show. Wooden stalls lined the streets, lights hung overhead, live music competed with the noise of people talking, and the air smelled like cinnamon, grilled sausages, sweet things and several drinks whose festive appearance made them look more innocent than they probably were. There were enormous pretzels, mugs of hot chocolate and enough food options to make “We’ll just have something small” completely meaningless within minutes.

Naturally, we took photographs. Then we took more photographs because somebody blinked. Then another because one person was looking at the wrong camera. Then a candid photograph that stopped being candid approximately three seconds after everyone realised a camera was pointing at us. Filipinos can turn almost any outing into a photo shoot if given adequate lighting, and Christmas markets provide extremely adequate lighting.

Jona’s leaving do could easily have been sad, but it really was not. There was too much laughter for that. We wandered between stalls, ate, talked and danced when the live music gave us enough encouragement to forget that members of the public were nearby. At some point, our coats became tighter from food, our phones became fuller from photographs and the original purpose of the evening—saying goodbye—felt less like goodbye and more like one last noisy celebration before the group configuration changed.

I think that is one of the nicest things about friendship when it has lasted long enough to become comfortable. You do not always need a grand speech. Sometimes you tell someone you are proud of them by showing up. Sometimes you congratulate them by teasing them mercilessly. Sometimes “We will miss you” sounds suspiciously like “Taksil ka talaga,” followed immediately by “Message ka pagdating mo.”

There is room for both.

Looking at Jona that night, clearly excited about what was ahead of her, made it difficult to be genuinely sad. Missing somebody and wanting them to go can exist at the same time. We can wish people would stay close while understanding that staying close geographically is not always what is best for them. Friendship is not supposed to keep people small enough to remain convenient.

Besides, she was moving to London, not disappearing into the wilderness without Wi-Fi.

We survived.

Then, about a week later, Christmas changed nationality.

ICCU Christmas Party 2023

If Birmingham German Christmas Market had given us wooden stalls, bratwurst, festive drinks and fairy lights, the ICCU Christmas Party arrived with lechon, pancit, kare-kare, games, drinks and karaoke. Britain had provided the winter setting, but we were clearly handling the catering.

There is something unmistakable about a Filipino Christmas gathering abroad. You can put us in the middle of England, lower the temperature to something deeply offensive to people from a tropical country and surround us with completely different traditions, but once trays of Filipino food appear on the table, the room changes. Suddenly somebody is asking whether you have eaten, somebody else is already taking photos before anyone touches the food, and at some stage a microphone will appear. It is not a threat. It is simply the natural order of things.

Our ICCU party was exactly that kind of organised disorder. There was food everywhere, drinks being poured, people moving between tables, games becoming much more competitive than their creators probably intended and laughter periodically becoming louder than the karaoke. Anyone expecting a quiet, elegant Christmas gathering would have been disappointed. Anyone expecting to be well fed would have done very well.

The karaoke, naturally, required no formal invitation. Filipino gatherings tend to operate on the assumption that somewhere inside every healthcare professional is a performer waiting for somebody to connect a microphone. Clinical roles may be clearly defined during a shift, but give everyone food and music after work and suddenly job descriptions become irrelevant. Nurses become singers. Quiet colleagues reveal alarming levels of confidence. Somebody knows every lyric to a song released fifteen years ago but occasionally forgets where they left their pen at work.

These are the mysteries of healthcare.

What struck me looking around that party was how different Christmas abroad can become after a few years. When you first move countries, Christmas can make the distance from family feel especially obvious. You notice who is missing. You compare traditions. You remember how December sounded and smelled back home. Then gradually, without replacing any of that, you begin collecting new traditions with the people around you.

Somewhere along the way, your colleagues stop being only the people you hand over patients to.

They become the people who know exactly what your face looks like after three difficult shifts. They know who drinks what, who will sing at karaoke, who needs convincing to join a photograph and who will say they are not hungry before eating half the table. You celebrate promotions, birthdays, weddings, departures and all the ordinary things that happen between shifts. You see one another tired, stressed, ridiculous, happy and occasionally dancing badly at Christmas parties.

That kind of familiarity is its own form of belonging.

The German market and the ICCU party looked completely different in the photographs, but in hindsight they belonged to the same story. One had Birmingham streets glowing under Christmas lights while we celebrated a friend leaving for something new. The other had Filipino food piled across tables while a group of people who had built careers far from home made December feel familiar again.

Both were noisy.

Both involved excessive food.

Both produced far too many photos.

Both mattered.

I used to think special memories needed a proper occasion attached to them. A milestone. A birthday. An anniversary. Something official enough to justify gathering everyone together. The older I get, the less I believe that. Sometimes the occasion is simply that everybody happened to be free on the same evening, which becomes increasingly miraculous once adulthood, shift patterns and geography enter the equation.

Friendship does not always need a grand reason to celebrate. Sometimes someone is moving to London. Sometimes it is the annual Christmas party. Sometimes everybody just needs an excuse to leave work clothes behind, eat too much and remember that their lives contain more than responsibilities.

And sometimes you do not realise how valuable an evening was until years later when you are scrolling through photographs and notice all the people standing together before jobs changed, people moved and calendars became harder to coordinate.

That is what photographs eventually become. At first they are just pictures from a night out. Later, they become evidence of a particular version of your life.

There we were: together in Birmingham, teasing Jona for leaving while knowing perfectly well that we wanted her to go. There we were again at the ICCU party, surrounded by Filipino food, laughter and the sort of karaoke confidence that really should have required a licence.

None of it looked historically important while it was happening.

That is probably why it was so good.

So to Jona, London may have stolen you first, but we forgive you. Mostly. Watching you choose a life that made you happy was worth losing the convenience of having you nearby, although I reserve the right to continue using the word taksil whenever appropriate.

And to the people in those Christmas photographs, thank you for being part of a chapter where Britain felt a little less far from home. We may have been thousands of miles from the Christmases we grew up with, but between bratwurst in Birmingham and lechon at the ICCU party, we did a respectable job of creating our own version.

It was German market outside, Filipino Christmas inside.

Somehow, that combination worked perfectly.

-ANJ ❤