I direct a children's education program called Education for Peace Children's Mission. Most of our little schools (called children's mission centers) are located in far flung mountain villages that once witnessed the violence of armed conflict between the government military forces and the armed rebels in the 1990s. Our program was a response to the educational needs  and provided psychological rehabilitaion for of the children trapped in this dreadful situation. Words like M-16, bombs, straffing, (military) "encounter", ambush, evacuation, massacre, fox hole were a regular part of the children's vocabulary because it was part of their daily experience as a family and as a community.

The souls of these simple people cried to the heavens for an end to the fighting so they could live in peace.

Through time, our program evolved from simply catering to the children's educational needs  and providing psychological rehabilitation, into an active peace building curriculum which focused on the values of peace, responsibility, independence, interdependence and love and stewardship for all of God's creation. It is our way of saying, "We do not want war in our communities anymore!".

Every Christmas, we would have a "No War Toys for Christmas" campaign where we discourage the parents and the community members from giving war toys to the children as Christmas gifts. We also educate and remind them of the real message of Christmas which is "Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men (and women)".

War toys are anathema to the meaning of Christmas. To me, it is almost blasphemous to give these instruments of death and violence on the commemoration of the birth of the Prince of Peace.

I hope that people will find something scandalously wrong with the image of children gleefully pointing their authentic looking Uzi's and high powered submachine guns  at each other in front of the Nativity scene (belen, as we call it in the Philippines) or chasing each other around the Christmas tree playing a make believe war. This is NOT Christmas!

War toys have no place under the Christmas tree, and should never be wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. Violence and war are not gifts. It would be tragic and dangerous when children start to associate war, death and violence with presents, gifts, joy, and family togetherness.

This includes those horribly violent video games. They are especially harmful to the children's psyche because their ability to discriminate between reality and make believe is not yet fully developed. I am honestly convinced that there is a strong relationship between these video games and the incidents of children taking their parent's to school and shooting their classmates or teachers (just like they do when they are playing their video games).

I am aware that certain wars need to be fought and won, specially those against tyranny and oppression,  but Christmas is not the time to explain these important issue to the children.

So to the parents, godparents, aunties, uncles, etc... who happen to stumble on this blog, please reflect in earnest on the stupidity of giving war toys to the children on Christmas (or any day for that matter). We cannot attain peace if we train our children to associate brutality, savagery and war with play, game, entertainment and recreation. 

(David, my niece Joan and nephew Seth giving out Christmas presents to the children of the mission, and yes, there were no war toys in these presents.)

May we have a truly joyful, meaningful and blessed Christmas.