Excuse the title of this month’s article. It is not a personal opinion. It reflects the expressions of some third-year high school students from a Catholic school. This is how they expressed themselves to their tutor in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays. They said that they wanted to be back on January 7, back to normal, after the holidays. Neither the winter holidays nor the gifts could compensate for the “bad vibe” that was generated in their families these days. Many suffer from the divorce of their parents and many more suffer from family disagreements, which are multiplied in intensity at Christmas.
Statistically, suicides increase around these celebrations, including the New Year. There are many people who fear Christmas.
And it is not that we should make an effort to destroy it. The word Christmas has almost disappeared from greetings. It is replaced by the word “holidays.” So much so that instead of “Christmas Day” in the nomenclature of the festivities, “Santa Claus Day” is already used…
I think that rather than completely suppressing it, it is about recovering it, both for Christians and for all of humanity.
In churches, we have images that have deteriorated over time. Faced with this, we can choose three solutions. The first is to put it away in the back room. It never completely disappears, it is always there, reminding us of its past. What’s more, sometimes we feel nostalgic and take a look at it. The image in the back room reminds us that one day it was part of the life of the temple. We can say that it lies in the land of the dead. Although it is poorly buried, since we remember from time to time that it is in the back room. This solution is similar to those who are saddened by the celebration of Christmas and choose to put it away. The wealthiest travel to countries outside the Christian orbit, where the word Christmas is not heard. Although with globalization it is difficult to achieve. Others stay, but act as if Christmas were not their business. They spend enormous energy muting music and not responding to attempts to congratulate them. The mourners facing a hard and difficult death, those discarded by love or resentment, the unhappy… all of them live Christmas as an enemy to fight, either ignoring what they see and hear around them, or with other gastronomic or cultural behaviours that show that they do not celebrate Christmas. The second solution is to restore the image. To make it look new, like before, it is repainted, with more or less art; any amateur covers up the defects and the original paint. Sometimes the final result is good, even similar to the initial one. This result usually stands out more than the original, being more attractive, but it feels artificial. It reminds us of the first, but it has lost beauty, authenticity and does not arouse the wonder that the artist who made it wanted to achieve. This second solution of covering up the defects, even covering up the original image, is similar to the attempts of the shepherds to restore Christmas with music and concerts in churches, or in families, forcing family meals, turning Christmas into a gastronomic scavenger hunt. The recent past is the criterion for restoration. In the case of images that were once dressed with veils and cloaks, new clothes are made for them. Even if that means covering up the original size that did not need clothing. It is a restoration of the recent past.
Finally, the best solution would be to return the image to its original splendor. Not everyone likes it. Sometimes what has been added to the image over the centuries has the value of tradition. What is more, the clothing is confused with the image. That would mean leaving aside so many memories, promises, emotions… In the collective memory is the dressed image. How horrible to take away its clothes and reduce its size to a quarter. It would lose a lot of popularity. Fortunately, for those who love the second solution, this other, the third, that of returning to the original, is a very expensive solution. It requires professionals and experts to clean the image of additions, to clean what is damaged, to discard what does not correspond to the image and to heal what remains healthy, leaving the original work exposed, reinforced and recovering to a great extent aspects unknown to the current devotees. I remember that when I had the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament restored, more than one person observed the angels painted on the ceiling, marveling at the new decoration so beautiful and artistic. To which I had to reply that it had not been painted, but restored, since it was already there from the beginning. The passage of time and the smoke from the candles had completely covered the paint.
What is the original Christmas and what are the clothes that hide the image.
The origin of the festival, established late, towards the 4th century, was born from the desire of the church to Christianize pagan festivals. We find the Saturnalia, family festivals of lights and food. The Roman Empire was becoming Christianized, but the ancient rites persisted. In the celebration of the birth of light, on the day when the night begins to decrease, we celebrate the birth of the Light that is Christ. Let us imagine that this pagan wrapping had not been there. Let us imagine celebrating Christmas in spring, a possible time of the birth of Jesus, according to scholars.
“What Christmas is it that you do not like?” the professor asked his students. “What Christmas is it that those who suffer reject? Why does he, who becomes tender to be born in the coldness of the night, find himself rejected by his light?” The poverty of solitude, the poverty of abandonment, the poverty of illness, are increased by the torrent of “noisy and forced joy” that Christmas seems to bring. Nostalgia, memory, comparisons, haste, noise, act as a barrier between the divine love of the cave of Bethlehem and the frozen heart of the one who suffers because it is Christmas.
The patient restorer has in mind the original image covered by the added decorations. Some decorations are kept because of their importance and enrichment of the image. Let us think of the representation of the Nativity in Grezio. Like the saint of Assisi who brings us the most human God, surrounded by the creatures who sing the Incarnate Word. Obviously the truly artistic compositions, starting with the liturgy and ending with the music, are additions that decorate and do not cover the image. And so many actions that make Christmas a reason to rescue the world from the coldness of selfishness.
But if Christmas is not to be liked, if it bothers or offends, I doubt very much that it is because of the capital Love concretized in the birth of the Messiah. To abandon Christmas for human foolishness is just the opposite of what Jesus does, who does not abandon us in our madness, but, despite human contempt, He wants to be born, He is born on the margins of the world to reach the center of the heart.
The Christmas that I do not like becomes the pattern to renew it, starting with me. The Advent that we begin is the occasion to renew it.
Last year, faced with the austerity of the decoration of the house, some friends who came into my house asked me if I did not celebrate Christmas. I answered them, “I celebrate the Christian Christmas.”
