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Have we ever stopped to think that Christmas can have a calming effect, being a haven of peace? The days are shorter, and the cold, rain, snow, and wind invite us into the intimacy of home, if by home we mean the hearth or place where the fire is lit, both the real fire and the fire of love that should reign in a house.
Furthermore, Nature and the City seem to follow the same rhythm, as if they were falling asleep or hibernating in peace, waiting for the bustling and fertile rhythm of spring.
And that is why it is striking that, instead of peace, people experience the opposite feeling at the end of the year, which is sadness, not at all in keeping with the arrival of Christmas. This is confirmed by Dr. Blas Sergio de Hinojosa (President of the Mental Health Association of Jalisco, Mexico):
many people experience greater sadness at this time of year because expectations regarding material things are very high.
Dr. Blas Sergio de Hinojosa
The mistake stems from the fact that “material things are mistakenly associated or linked to success in this society.” For example: the false expectation of receiving expensive gifts “or the fact that you are not invited to different places or parties makes people sad, because they begin to value things based on social criteria.” One wonders, then, what the criteria are or what we understand by “success.” For De Hinojosa, success is one thing and successism is another. He defines ‘successism’ as “I may have an excellent car, but in other areas of my life I am doing badly,” while “success is when all areas of your life are in balance.” Could it be that the peaceful haven of Christmas or the warmth of home that we were talking about has to be worked at through balance in life, and that Christmas has to be earned and sought after, or that it has to be valued, rather than coming on its own?
Dr. de Hinojosa continues: sadness comes from creating false expectations, and this is,
a serious problem in this society, because in Western countries you first have to have and then be, while in Eastern nations you first have to be and then have.
Dr. Blas Sergio de Hinojosa
Our psychologist from Jalisco therefore gives more importance to BEING than to HAVING; he is inclined to believe that men and women should “first be and then have.” But what is BEING? Being, he continues to argue,
is to promote values, foster human relationships, and above all, encourage communication within the family. You don’t need to throw big parties or indulge in extravagant luxuries to enjoy the Christmas season.
Dr. Blas Sergio de Hinojosa
In short, to be is to return to the warmth of home, of the hearth, or of the fire of love in the house, in the family.
The night is hard when you are alone, with only TENER as your companion. And that is why winter, the cold, the earlier sunsets, and the longer nights can lead to sadness. Nostalgia grows stronger at night, when everything disappears and fades away and we are left with ourselves, with two weak hands on which to rest our tired heads and listen to our heavy, cold hearts, without human warmth. Saint Paul, always so rigorous and strict in moral matters, warns us of this negative feeling at night:
The night is far gone, the day is at hand… Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness… Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh …
(Rom. 13 : 12.)
Saint Paul warns us not to abandon our BEING to sadness, not to remain in the HAVING that our body demands, leaving the soul without light, without fire, without love.
We forget that on Christmas night a Light was lit. That Mary, a humble mother, “wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). They had nothing, not even a place to sleep, and yet they had everything. They had no one but the sweet company of animals in a manger. At night, without noise, Christ becomes the fire of the hearth within the bosom and house of God, in the poverty of hay, hay that is a symbol of our fragile nature, full of limitations. Mary and Joseph had the most precious and fragile things of the night: some animals and “some shepherds who took turns watching their flocks during the night” (Lk 2:8). What is the night for Mary and Joseph? An inner call to the mystery, to where the light of Jesus is born. Those who HAVE and live in the darkness of materialism will lack a light and an inner call full of values that awaken the discovery of a mystery in the little body of a Child. Mary and Joseph value poverty, simplicity, not having, BEING in its purest form: giving birth wherever… in a manger.
Not everything is purely material, but mystery. Dr. De Hinojosa points out:
When people talk about values, they often associate them with something obsolete or outdated, but when we encounter a problem of any kind, the first thing we say is that whoever did this to you has no values.
Dr. Blas Sergio de Hinojosa
Those shepherds who did something good for Mary and Joseph and that child truly had values: they had almost nothing before them, just a small, ordinary thing: they went to that manger and found “Mary, Joseph, and the newborn lying in the manger” (Lk 2:16). But they WERE everything because they were able to live it in their hearts and tell others about it: “they told what they had heard about this child” (Lk 2:17). This means that the good news that the angels told them was lodged in their hearts, the news that
