MOST Filipinos expect to have a happy Christmas and believe it is better to give than to receive, the results of the latest Social Weather Stations survey showed.
The survey was conducted among 1,500 adults nationwide, and it says 73 percent or seven out of every 10 Filipinos expect to celebrate this Christmas.
But five percent of the respondents said their Christmas will be sad while 21 percent said it will be neither happy nor sad.
In a message to the faithful, Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle said Christmas is a season of hospitality and every Filipino in need, especially the poor, must be welcomed.
He said hospitality is second nature to Filipinos.
“We make strangers or guests feel at home in our company. Our home becomes their home,” Tagle said.
“Hospitality enables us to expand our home so that no one could say there was no room for them.”
SWS says the expectation of a happy Christmas this year is an improvement from the previous years: from 72 percent in 2015 and 71 percent in 2014 and the third highest since 2002’s 82 percent.
The expectations of a happy Christmas were highest in Mindanao at 78 percent.
Seventy-four percent of the respondents from the Visayas and in Balance Luzon said Christmas will be happy.
But only 66 percent of the respondents in Metro manila expect a happy Christmas this year.
The same survey said three in four adults or 75 percent said it was better to give gifts this Christmas while 21 percent said it was “better to receive.”
The respondents who said it was better to give were highest in Balance Luzon at 82 percent and Metro Manila at 81 percent.
Only 72 percent of the respondents from the Visayas said this Christmas would be a happy one compared with 63 percent from those in Mindanao.