A liquid, disbelieving society with a growing tendency to bad humor celebrating the birth of a child God who will end up redeeming the sins of all humanity. Can an article like this start in 2022, with the majority of readers militating in secularism and disbelief, without many of them deciding to turn the page? Maybe not. And yet, it is Christmas and that is what is celebrated in these parts where we graze. There will be those who say, listen, no, in no way. What happens is that you have not read enough.
Actually, what we practice these days is dissimulation with mangers and little trees of the pagan winter solstice that the Christians kidnapped for their own use and enjoyment. Let's close this question for the brave and without nuances: even if it were so, the truth is that things are what they are and not what they were. And the big party is for the birth of Jesus.
Christmas, discounting gifts and meals, is an opportunity to experience, believers and non-believers, the most substantive of what is human, which is the transcendence of oneself from, blessed paradoxes, oneself. Travel to the center of the self to meet with all of humanity. Knowing oneself unique and unrepeatable and, nevertheless, equal to others in the most absolute sense. Take off your hat to the miracle of humanity, reflected in the individual lives of more than seven billion people who populate the Earth at this time. A celebration of being bathed in the optimism of hope reflected in a birth.
This look at what has commonly come to be called the Christmas spirit has always had its enemies. Nothing to celebrate, Cromwell said when he banned it in the name of Puritanism, declaring it the day of the heathen. Today puritanism is back. And despite the fact that material Christmas is formally safe, what it represents -whether from a religious or a secular level- is permanently attacked by the epidemic of pessimism and contempt for human existence itself, considered by many preachers more than a prejudice and condemnation for the world than a miracle that should be celebrated.
Humanity is presented to us as a plague that devours the planet and itself. The person, the real one, too far from the theoretical models of perfection of those who insist on pointing us out daily, reminding us of how we should be and blaming us for who we are. A past as a species of which we can only be ashamed because we have done everything wrong; and a future we won't have simply because we don't deserve it.
This catalog of thought, tending to hegemony in societies with more resources, is the antithesis of what we celebrate these days. There is nothing more anti-Christmas than denying women and men, the whole of humanity, the experience of their existence as something intrinsically good.
Christmas, the true Christmas, the joy of the birth of a child, of God made man for believers, is impossible without the previous acceptance of the greatness of the human in the most basic of its existence and also of the overcoming of oneself as the center and measure of all things. That and nothing else are the gifts and the sharing of food, drinks and songs. Rejoice in belonging to the marvelous club of humanity, which is renewed with each birth for ever and ever. Believers add an amen here if you wish.
Robots are announced to replace us in manual labor. Also artificial intelligence capable of doing the same in the work of the intellect. We dream of creating a technological human that does not bear that name because we know, no matter how hard we try to the contrary, that there is nothing in the world that deserves more praise than ourselves. That's why we want to copy ourselves. And yes, we are also capable of the worst, there are many episodes in the present and also in the past to remind us of it.
But for that there is also the antidote of Christmas. To make sure every year that we can redeem ourselves from everything that, being part of our nature, can be improved. Christmas is an exercise in full trust. A fall into the arms of others and offer yours so that others do the same. So let's fall. And by the way, let's take the loudspeaker to say to all of us: How beautiful it is to live! Merry Christmas, dear reader.
