“Christmas is one of those times when life is as it should be.
Also, it is one of the few really important things that happen to us: having dinner, at the Christmas Eve table, between the looks that leaned out of our crib, those that will look out over our grave and those that still hold us so as not to fall » .
The quote comes from
Ya sentarás cabeza
(Asteroide), Ignacio Peyró's exceptional diary.
The author invokes
one of the main expectations we place on these dates: that they convey a sense of continuity
.
Let them make us feel for a few days that life is cyclical instead of linear;
so whatever happens, there will always be a Christmas table to return to.
And that sitting there we will always meet the people who can attest to our passage through this world.
This Christmas of 2020 seems designed to feed one of our greatest fears: the breaking of that continuity.
The expulsion of that annual cycle, of that cozy routine in which even the bad moods or the imperfections of others fit
.
The milder version of this expulsion is for those families who have had to change their usual plans because of the restrictions.
The most serious version is that of those who have lost one of their own;
those for whom no Christmas Eve will be like before.
Few texts capture this experience like
A Christmas Memory
, the story of Truman Capote.
The narrator recalls a typical Christmas from his childhood, which he spent helping his older cousin make cakes for the whole town
.
Despite the relationship between the boy and the lady, the narrator clarifies that the important thing is that "each is the other's best friend."
After closing that Christmas memory there is a narrative blow: «This is our last Christmas together.
Life separates us.
The protagonist goes through other houses, through boarding schools.
She writes with her friend and in her letters she detects the deterioration, the disease.
When he finally receives the news of his death, he feels that it separates him "from an irreplaceable part of myself, leaving it loose like a kite whose string has broken."
That is why, in the mornings at the end of December, “I keep looking up.
As if expecting to see a pair of stray comets heading skyward. "
So our country, our planet, this Christmas Eve: thousands of lost comets, heading towards a night sky and without stars.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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