A Christmas under suspicion: peace, mercy and forgiveness

We are left with a most shocking and unfriendly country, to put it mildly. Above all, because of the things that happen in the world of politics and misgovernment, both at the national level with the Paqui de Cerdán devastating the Corte Inglés, like with Trump dismantling Venezuela. We are starting the month of December, a time that evokes and leads to ChristmasWhether we are supporters or not of this historical event that even in Japan is celebrated without being very clear about what is really being celebrated.

Many complain that the ruling party and perfume sellers have started too earlyalmost in November, to sell us the festive artillery. Others rub their hands and encourage themselves to enjoy life in the best possible way, basically caring about the fun.

The bad thing is not that Christmas arrives soon, which always arrives on December 25, but everything that happens and surrounds this great date. It’s kind of real stage fright what is to come: Work dinners, family meals, shopping at all hours, gifts everywhere, toasts, kisses, hugs… the party becomes an ordeal of excess instead of a manger of peace and hope. If we consider the protagonist of this event pure and just, God made manwas born in the solitude of a stable surrounded by a few people who did not fully understand the magnitude of what was happening at that time.

In this, many are the same as they were back then; Today, a large majority of human beings do not perceive in the 21st century the greatness of the event that is celebrated on December 25a birth that transformed and transforms human existence in some way. Instead, we let ourselves be carried away by the lucrative and commercial current that marks the events that customarily take place on these dates. The wonderful lights that shine in Vigo and in Madrid, or in New York and Londonthey should not only be there to sell more gifts or more food and drink, but to transfer us to a new dimension and wake us up from our lethargy so that the human wisdom that is so in the doldrums is illuminated in these times of much AI and little AI: Intelligent Love.

Last Saturday, I visited with some friends some of the architectural and Christmas wonders that it has. Alcala de Henares: the University, the House of Cervantes, the Cathedral, the buildings of the Society of Condueños… and we also passed in front of the house where Manuel Azaña, president of the Second Republic, lived. The host who accompanied us, who knows the history of the city well, reminded us of a key phrase from Azaña’s life:“Peace, mercy and forgiveness”. The politician pronounced it in Barcelona on July 18, 1938, and in it he asked for an end to the Civil War.

Azaña’s words were not only a political speech, but also a sentimental invocation to the unity and harmony of the Spanish. Fortunately, the times are not the same. However, the very polarized reality that today’s politicians have created, mainly Pedro Sánchez with his dividing wall between “sanchistas” and the rest of Spaniards, almost always ends up leading to heated confrontations, including family and work-related ones.

Perhaps for this reason, when during these holidays it is your turn to sit down to eat next to a progressive brother-in-law or a conservative daughter-in-law with ideas different from her owntake it very calmly –Keep calm and carry on– and remember to make true what the famous phrase proposes that works almost like karma: “Peace, mercy and forgiveness”, which Azaña pronouncedbut long before him and with greater weight and meaning, it was pronounced by the protagonist of Christmas itself.