There are two shadows that hang over Christmas, two clouds that can lead us to waste the magic of a tradition that, from whatever perspective, secular or religious, remains a unique and unrepeatable moment throughout the year: the anxiety of Christmas performances and the family brawl under the tree. These are two very common phenomena in our compulsive lifestyles, and they share the toxins that transform a privileged time, for all it can give us, into a sort of end-of-year nightmare to be forgotten.
Christmas performance anxiety has very similar connotations to the habit of creating, with a certain amount of unconscious self-harm, false emergenciesIrrelevant things that we pack into our agenda dominated by haste, presentism, and the here-and-now, and make essential, with a sleight of hand that severely tests our (presumed) intelligence.
During the Christmas holidays, performance anxiety takes off at low altitude ("Where are we having dinner on the 24th? And lunch on the 25th?") and then rises, to release into the air like a hang glider caught in Hamlet-like and vacuous riddles ("After Christmas, are we going to the beach or the mountains?"). You might say: but the holidays come twice a year, and the question of how, when, and where must still be addressed. Right: but why pepper it with anxiety, with the frantic search for the original, particular, unique place, all stuff that in reality is more or less like Neverland, the title of a very sweet song by Edoardo Bennato?
In the midst of the agonizing decision about the Christmas table (even the menu, in some cases, becomes a source of anxiety, because at Christmas, no one really knows why, you can't go wrong, especially with recipes) and the holiday expeditions, the tension over gifts swells like a giant soap bubble. What am I going to do for him? He already has it! Will he like it? I'm afraid not! In this case, Christmas performance anxiety isn't just the fleeting fear of disappointing, but also a sort of crossword puzzle that needs to be completed in time: woe betide anyone who's left on the Christmas list. And never mind if, in order not to offend people who perhaps, thanks to their natural common sense, aren't at all nervous about Christmas presents, we end up with a nasty case of gastritis from the presents to put under the tree.
For those who have the gift of faithThe value of Christmas should be inseparable from its powerful religious significance. Everything happens between Advent and the Nativity, in a dimension of meaning that deserves reflection, prayer, encounter, sharing, joy, and mystery. Yet, as believers, we manage to make twists and turns, with the stress of the calendar in hand, that inexorably distance us from this perspective, narrowing a horizon that at Christmas should project us toward Infinity, but instead crushes us into a space that feels like a soccer field, so small, modest, and irrelevant. A space where our most authentic expectations, those that can shake up our existence, are squandered in a vortex of petty, short-term goals.
For those who do not have the gift of faith, However, the spiritual charge of Christmas, and of the entire Christmas season, cannot be ignored or, worse, manipulated. It is a brief season in which we can dedicate ourselves to our dearest loved ones—children, grandchildren, families, companions, in the long and peaceful time of love that is finally expressed with kisses, caresses, hugs, real and authentic gestures, and not virtual ones like the smiley faces and hearts of emojis. The real Christmas is this: the pinnacle of emotions that all arise from the desire to be together, to share something, trying to open the doors of our existential cages as much as possible and free ourselves from solitudeWhether real or contrived, there are rare moments in life when ritual and tradition truly unite communities: and the entire Christmas cycle, with its long, magical trail, rightfully belongs to this select category of events.
Being together, caring for each other, for the "we," more than for the usual "I," also means remembering, with a gentle version of nostalgia, those who are not here, and perhaps are missing because they left us too soon, in life and not under the tree. And those who are here but can't be seen, because they suffer, also because of the distance that separates them from our Christmas liturgy, which has always brought together the sacred and the profane, the Mass with the shower of gifts.
For those who are there but can't see it, the backdrop of Christmas isn't the green of the tree and the red of the packages: it's only the black of pain, suffering, poverty, and war. These are real things, far removed from our Christmas anxieties!
As unfortunately true, and sometimes tragicomic, things are the family fights that Christmas generates., usually in families that are already broken and don't even know it. None of us has managed to escape this Christmas tradition: the argument under the tree. It's inevitable, like the smoke billowing from a combustion engine, with the expectations and emotions that build up around Christmas. So we can turn down or, worse, insult, over a tortellino in brodo and a slice of pandoro, the close relative we've always hated. So rebellious and capricious children finally have a golden opportunity to settle scores with their father, who has taken to being a friend in his life, and their mother, who has chosen the vocation of helicopter mother.
There's always a score to settle at Christmas, to waste it in the worst possible way, and there's never a time when that very thin line separating love from hate is so evident. So much so that it takes a lot of energy, a lot of goodwill, a lot of inner strength, not to dare cross it.. But we certainly shouldn't give in to cosmic pessimism: even family fights at Christmas can be... avoid, and it takes very little, much less than it seems. Especially if we reflect, even just for a moment, even with all the agnosticism of this world, in front of a nativity scene where, among the houses and the shepherds, there is first of all the Person who at Christmas, more than two thousand years ago, came to give us a hand to get us out of trouble.
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