VSow do you manage to celebrate when the world isn’t celebrating, when war and climate change increase worries, while inflation aggravates economic difficulties a little more each day?
Yet, despite these obstacles, most of those who are asked how they envision the end of the year, answer in the same way. They express their desire to maintain the party at all costs, with a festive meal and gifts, and often conclude with this statement which seems to justify all their efforts for them: “It’s still Christmas!” »
Why is Christmas so important?
For adults who were brought up in families where Christmas was celebrated happily, continuing to do so with their children is no doubt a way of bringing a bit of their childhood back to life, while establishing a joyful and tender transmission between the generations.
But Christmas has also become a celebration of such social importance that it concerns, whatever tradition they come from, all families. And this can lead to those who, because of their material difficulties, are unable to celebrate it, a very painful feeling of exclusion (accompanied, for the parents, by guilt in relation to their children). A feeling that is also found in all people – and particularly the oldest – who know that on this day when everyone is supposed to find their loved ones, they will be alone. Not being able to be happy when you imagine that others are, not being able to feel ” like the others “, is always very challenging.
Is it normal to consider the Christmas celebrations ambivalently?
The image of the Christmas party is the place of a very particular split. It is, in fact, socially presented as the celebration of the family, of love and of the happiness of exchanging gifts supposed to be, from this perspective, so many proofs of this love; and whose number under the tree seems, moreover, in the advertisements promoted by the brands at this time, to measure the intensity.
At the same time, Christmas is the time when a very large number of those who, moreover, buy these gifts, say how much they dread these festivities or can express themselves in family gatherings, such as a dramatic backdrop, the worst of relationships : rancor, jealousy, and even hatred, accumulated.
This cleavage is also often accompanied by a paradox because these people who say they fear these trying settling of scores do not seem to want the abolition of the party: they would only like, they say, not to be obliged to ‘participate.
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