On the first night of November this year, shoppers at the Daly City, Calif., location of Seafood City cheerfully sang the introduction to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” As if on cue, the merry band of revelers gathered around a D.J. booth set up in the checkout aisle and broke into the signature up-tempo verse.

The social media accounts of Seafood City, the largest Filipino supermarket chain in North America, captured the scene. With hot trays of Filipino street food serving as the backdrop, the singers raised their phones high, their bodies and screens bopping up and down, to record the joyous gathering at their local grocery store.

Recipe: Pancit Malabon (Seafood Rice Noodles)

While the annual defrosting of Mariah Carey in November might seem premature to some, the Christmas season unofficially begins for many Filipinos during the months ending in “-ber.” Decorating, playing Christmas music and embracing the spirit of the season can start as early as September and continue until January and is highlighted by Noche Buena feasts and festivities.

Noche Buena, which means “good night” in Spanish, is also the name of the Christmas Eve celebrations in Catholic Filipino (and also Latino) communities. The heart of Noche Buena centers on family, tradition and gift-giving — and an abundant feast. The D.J. parties at Seafood City, called Late Night Madness, reflect the spirit of the holiday through music, food and dancing in community.

“We want to be a place where people come together, enjoy company, meet new people and celebrate who we are as a culture,” said Patricia Francisco, the director of digital marketing and events for Seafood City.

According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of Filipinos in the United States live in California, where Seafood City has its headquarters. Ms. Fernandez and her team initially came up with Late Night Madness to appeal to a younger shoppers and to introduce their Filipino street food line. They tapped into the thriving Bay Area Filipino D.J. scene and hired JP Breganza, who’s based in Vallejo, to kick off the first event at the Daly City store in September.

When he played a crowd favorite by the Filipino disco band VST & Company, the party took off: Shoppers danced while holding plates of pandesal sliders with adobo, sizzling pork sisig and kwek-kwek (battered quail eggs) skewers. Mr. Breganza wanted to bring a Filipino house-party vibe to the events. “And by the second time I played there, it ended up becoming a whole movement of people wanting to come back, to step outside and celebrate the culture and being themselves around each other,” he said.

Lord Maynard Llera, the award-winning chef and owner of Kuya Lord in Los Angeles, said Noche Buena dinners begin late on Christmas Eve and can last well into the night, sometimes ending in the early morning. Christmas Day is spent resting, visiting relatives and enjoying leftovers. “We share everything with our friends and family, and with big portions,” Mr. Llera said. “The meal needs to be abundant.”

Born and raised in Lucena City in the Calabarzon region of the Philippines, Mr. Llera fondly recalled going to mass in his hometown at 10 p.m. on Noche Buena with the sweet scents of kakanin, a variety of rice-based sweets, swirling in the night air. Outside the church, street food vendors sold sweet Filipino rice cakes and other desserts. On their way home at midnight, his family would pick up bibingka, a celebratory rice cake traditionally baked in a clay pot, to enjoy at their feast.

Echoing Mr. Llera’s sentiments, Catherine Tolentino, an owner of Gemmae Bake Shop in Long Beach, described the Noche Buena feast as rich with celebratory dishes. Because many people in the Philippines historically lived below the poverty line, “a lot of the foods that are eaten during Noche Buena are foods that we want to indulge in,” she said.

A Filipino Noche Buena feast shines with a centerpiece of lechon, a whole roasted pig, or hamon, a pineapple-glazed Christmas ham. Savory dishes filling out the table can include noodle dishes, such as the orange-hued, seafood-topped pancit Malabon or pancit palabok; crunchy lumpia Shanghai; embutido, a steamed meatloaf; lechon kawali; spaghetti studded with sliced hot dogs; and chicken afritada, a tomato-based chicken stew.

Recipe: Filipino Fruit Salad

In addition to the classic bibingka, a variety of other sweets bring good cheer to the holiday. Filipino fruit salad, a cooling and colorful mix of shredded young coconut, canned fruit cocktail enriched with condensed milk and all-purpose cream, most likely came out of the American colonial period. For a sweet taste of Noche Buena, this treat is not only easy to prepare, but also a joy to share.

Around the holidays, Gemmae Bake Shop specializes in delicacies such as pancit Malabon, a celebratory dish from the coastal city of Malabon in the Philippines. Ms. Tolentino’s mother, Prescilla, opened the Long Beach location of Gemmae Bake Shop in 1993, and taught the dish to Catherine, who took over management of the shop’s operations around 2016. (Catherine said her mother is still “the big boss.”) In this family recipe, thick rice noodles stained by ground annatto seeds are mixed with shrimp, pork and crunchy crushed chicharrones.

Mr. Breganza, the D.J., said that celebrating community and culture with food, music and dance is “very Filipino.”

“We just live to eat and party, and sing, especially with immigrant parents coming from the Philippines,” he said. “That’s all they had was music and food. Especially my parents growing up in poverty. You know all the neighborhood had in those days was togetherness.”

Making space for togetherness is a welcome reminder that in the face of life’s challenges, it is never too soon (or too late) to get into the holiday spirit, wherever that may be — even the local grocery store, with the boom of bass lines bouncing off the seafood counter.

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