Maundy Thursday

Today is what is known as Maundy Thursday.  It is part of Holy Week – the week between Palm Sunday and Easter.  Holy Week is a huge thing here in the Philippines.  I remember when we first moved to the Philippines, a lot of businesses were closed for the entire week.  Particularly, almost every business has been closed on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday.  We were somewhat surprised about this.  Feyma had lived in the States long enough that she had forgotten about Holy Week in the Philippines.  Basically, the whole country shuts down for most of a week.  Funny thing is that Easter Sunday is generally not that big of a deal, malls and other businesses are open for business as normal.

This year is a little bit different.  In addition to Thursday and Friday being national holidays, Black Saturday and also the Monday after Easter have been declared holidays too.  So, that means that many businesses will be shut down on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday!  Honestly, it is amazing to me.  In many instances, even grocery stores and Pharmacies and such are closed all of these days!  This means that you have to really search in order to buy even food or medicine!

This morning, I told Feyma that we should go for a ride around Davao today and just see what the situation was with business closed around town.  We got a bit of a surprise this year!  It seems that a lot more businesses are open than in the past.  For instance, Victoria Plaza and Gaisano Mall were both open for business – and they each had a lot of customers!  There is even a car repair business called Pit Stop in the parking lot behind Victoria Plaza that was open for business today!  This shocked me.  As we drove further around town, I was then surprised to see that NCCC Mall and SM City Mall were both closed.  I had figured that since the other malls were open, they would open too, but it was not the case.  I would say about half of the restaurants were open for business today too.  All in all probably 50% of the businesses around town seemed to be open today.

In past years, nothing was open.  Even TV stations were off the air during Holy Week.  This year is a surprise.  It makes me think that the Philippines is moving toward a day when Holy Week will not be what it was just a few weeks ago.  I am happy for those who use Holy Week to celebrate and solemnize their Religious beliefs.  However, from what I have seen in the past, most people use Holy Week to go out and have fun, take vacations and such.  It is nice that at least you can go buy some groceries or go out for lunch on Maundy Thursday.  We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow.  I’ll take a little survey around Davao again and see if Good Friday is much the same as I found Maundy Thursday to be.