I remember as children, we somehow had beautiful foods during Noche Buena (translated literally as Good Night from Spanish to English, but words we used to refer to our Christmas Eve Celebration).
What I enjoyed most then was halaya ube as pictured here (the picture extracted from Foodipino as I don't have any image of it simply because we don't normally have this now on our Noche Buena table). I think this is one of the most delicious Filo food and it is fabulous even as topping on ice cream. When we all visited Lola, our paternal grandmother each Christmas Day, I , and I believed all my siblings as well, always looked forward then to having halaya because our Lola cooked it the best and beyond compare-- not discrediting of course my big sisters who laboured so hard in the kitchen to serve this each Christmas Eve Celebration. 
Another food I miss now during our Noche Buena was the Christmas chocolate which my mother bought from the market to make us all hot chocolate drink. This chocolate was special because it isn't the instant Cadbury or Milo or Sustagen chocolate drink. As mother cooked Christmas chocolate, Nimrod, primarily as well as all of us, could not help but savour in our nostrils its sweet aroma that filled our entire house. I showed here a picture of a cup of chocolate which I extracted also from the internet and which was labelled cacao. Am not quite sure whether what my mother bought from the market was called cacao. As a kid, my only concern then was to eat and enjoy food glorious Christmas foods.
The third food I also missed even to this day was the chicken salad prepared Filipino way as pictured on the right (also an extract from the internet). Of all the images, I think this one resembled what my mother and later on my big sisters prepared then. Of course there were also other goodies like the chestnuts my father usually brought home and the queso de bola or chicken sandwiches our big sisters made. My siblings and I truly could not stop eating. We loved to the last bits all our Christmas foods!!!
As a finale, my siblings and I usually had this fruit salad (pictured here from our 2014 Noche Buena). This salad is not quite the same as the ordinary fruit salad here in Sydney because it is rich, supersweet and delicious just like the usual Filipino fruit salad. Thanks to my sister Cyn who should be an expert in cooking and preparing Filipino foods, after graduating from the university with a food and nutrition degree.My siblings and I grew up with the foods pictured above as highlights of our Christmas Eve Celebration year after year, not to mention the other foods such as ham, which my father usually got as a gift from work, the chicken adobo cooked by our mother, should we want to eat rice instead of or in addition to bread, and the hot chicken macaroni soup which our mother also cooked for us. As December had always been a cooler month in our native country, the soup and the hot chocolate drink were beautifully suitable to warm also our hearts. Praise be to God for our parents who made our Christmases memorable and beautiful for us year after year!
Truly, I miss the simplicity of the Christmas foods we had in the past back in our own country of origin. Now, that we all have migrated to an affluent country, it is truly amazing that our Noche Buena table has been like those pictured in magazines....however, I still miss the old, golden days of halaya, chicken salad and Christmas chocolate. I am not complaining!!! What I am trying to get across here is there is nothing wrong to have all the festive and elaborate Noche Buena but I really believe, it is always beautiful to go back to your beginnings---once in awhile.
Below are some photos of our Christmas season's celebration here in Sydney.
Finally, and it is worth mentioning, the most important feature and symbolic of our Christmas celebrations from time immemorial has always been the cake with the inscription on it "Happy Birthday Jesus."
After all, Christmas is not about food but about Jesus--God's Greatest Gift to mankind and the Bread of Life.
