Decorated shop windows, Christmas markets with their mulled wine, sweets and crafts, balconies decorated with garlands and gardens populated with reindeer, elves and illuminated Santa Clauses; everything around us exudes a festive atmosphere.
But you may know the feeling: as much as I rejoice in all the lights that brighten the long December nights, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s almost indecent to celebrate Christmas when so many people around the world are suffering. Can we party, feast, and unwrap presents? Have fun, rejoice, and toast to the New Year.
And then I tell myself that it is precisely in times like ours that Christmas (or any other holiday) takes on its full importance. It is an opportunity to remind ourselves of what matters in life:
making time for each other,
being grateful and opening our hearts,
and also celebrating and rejoicing.
This does not mean that we do not care what is happening elsewhere in the world. Nor does it prevent us from sympathizing with all those who are not sitting in the warmth of their loved ones at a well-stocked table and who do not have packages to unwrap.
Martin Luther King said:
“The message of Christmas is that there is no force more powerful than love. Love triumphs over hate like light over darkness.”
Martin Luther King
I am not at all religious, but I would like to believe that it is possible to live together, that it is possible to build bridges, even where the gaps seem unbridgeable.
And there is something else that helps me overcome my gloomy thoughts and look forward to the holiday season: the children around me. This year, I will be thinking in particular of a line from Charles Dickens’s well-known story A Christmas Carol :
“We have to become children again sometimes, especially at Christmas, a feast day founded by a child God.”
Charles Dickens
