Have you seen Sergio the uproar caused by the Christmas cover of “Der Spiegel”? Baby Jesus pops out of an open Amazon box while St. Joseph thinks: “I didn’t order it.” And Our Lady asks: «But can we change it»? «I saw it all right. A low-level blasphemous scoundrel. Much worse than American pop artist Haring’s mega poster. Do you remember Al? You were wrapping a shopping center in New York … ». Yeah, wait… Giant Santa put on a cross instead of Jesus? “Just that. Like the Christ in a suit and designer blue jeans in the window of a department store on Fifth Avenue. As far as I can remember, Christmas has often been overwhelmed by blasphemous drifts on the sacred symbols of Christianity. Advertising is the cursed soul of commerce and too often winks at customers of a faith without worries. When I think back to my childhood Christmas, I confess, I feel like an alien adrift in space, ended up on Earth by chance. Then he was like the seeds inside the clod, awaiting the magical solstice of peasant civilization. Safe, in the warm pastoral idyll that that night kept away the icy gusts of history. To be at peace, it was enough to return to the provident rite of birth and to the comfort of the celestial signs confused in the supportive multitude of the crib. Now, however, the West, a crucial area of well-being and malaise generated by the technological age, offers a picture of blatant, even blatant lack of spirituality. A sterile noise. Mine, dear Ale, was the Christmas of the silver paper, of the handful of snow stolen from the sack of flour. And some moss. We boys from the oratory went to detach it from the railroad wall. We expected it to be the right color. That bright green peeking through the little cracks in the bricks. We peeled it off with a small knife with a fake mother-of-pearl handle used only on those days of the year. We were already in the mood for questions, although we understood that the answers would come with some prudence. Why does God choose to be born on earth through Jesus, millennia after the big bang? And just in that year, in that night and in a remote place, devoid of telephone and radio? Don Rossi explained to us that God, in order to communicate the coming on earth of a son who became incarnate Word, to be one with humanity, needed to entrust the good news, that is, word and voice, body and spirit. There really was no room for Christmas blasphemy.” And if, as claimed by the “British Medical Journal” which publishes a study by a group of scientists, the Christmas spirit also depended on our brain? “In an anatomical sense you mean?” So it seems. There would be five areas more active in the “Christmas lovers” group than in the “non-Christmas group”. Brain areas associated with spirituality, somatic senses, and facial emotion recognition. “As happened to the old miser protagonist of” A Christmas Carol “, the novel by Charles Dickens. On Holy Night, he had a disturbing visit from three spirits: Christmas past, present and future. It was 1843.” © reserved reproduction
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