Open the Gate and let through…It is almost Christmas time. The year comes to its end, the days shorten and the nights get longer. Here on Fuerteventura, we do not experience these phenomena to the same extent as “back home“. Here we still have the warmth and the light and we don’t have the sh… weather like rain, fog, cold, snow, but neither the open fire place, the fine delicacies from home.
And so the people used to enjoy the solstice on the 24 Dec, hundreds of years ago, when the days were getting longer again and light came back to earth.
Christianity modified this happening into Christmas, the day that Jesus Christ is born again and the moment that He brings (spiritual) Light to us all.
But in the countryside this is also the time when the winter is at its deepest and coldest and – due to darkness and cold – many people get caught by memories and emotions, creeping out from their sub consciousness… Many times, pictures and feelings from our childhood pop up and most of them come from bad and negative experiences.
But because of the Christmas shopping, advertisement, neon billboards, glitter trees, Christmas markets and the high expectations of the children about yet another pile of presents, people do forget about something very important: there is another side to this festivity, like with Yin and Yang and it always has been this way…
Just in these dark and colder moments many people who suffer from problems, poverty and illnesses, get confronted with their memories. Many carry sadness in their hearts as they experience their loneliness much stronger in these moments due to experiences of rejection, separations, divorce, being jobless, existential concerns, and of course the multiple and fear-making diseases. And… therefore many souls suffer even more during Christmas, and depression and suicidal thoughts are on a high (I witnessed this phenomena many times in my office)… and it could be your neighbour, couldn’t it? It is so difficult to look inside one’s heart.
One day just before Christmas, a female client of my therapy office, told me that she was very afraid of Christmas. Year after year this family-event meant a compulsive get-together with a lot of preparations, a lot of alcohol and a lot of fights at the end… really a celebration of Love.
Another woman faced every time her loneliness at Christmas, after divorce and couldn’t cope anymore with the endless questioning from her kids about Christmas, the presents and daddy.
And another woman talked about her feelings of loneliness, of deep sadness and depressions during Christmas because of memories about her bad childhood, her history and the death of her parents.
Another woman came to me, after the recent decease of her husband due to cancer, to drop her sorrows onto me because she now fears to be alone on Christmas and she could not cope with the experience of the exhausting time when her husband was fighting his disease through chemotherapy, the high hopes of both and the horrible and unavoidable death.
(When you wonder why there are more women in my examples: it is a fact that women consult therapeutic help easier than men.)
So, why would these people fancy jingle bells and Christmas, when pain, sadness, tears, fears and depression are tearing them apart? No, they need really something else, even when they would be surrounded with “Feliz Navidad” and Christmas trees. This is all just superficial. Our old spiritual Christmas event has been over-Americanised.
When you, dear reader, are one of these who are filled with problems, please look out for a human being to talk to, or call me on (see below). And please, don’t try to immerse your feelings in alcohol – they won’t go away and will return. And if another person comes to you to shed his/her sorrow onto you, then, human being, give this person your time and heart.
A Christmas gift for those who are carrying the burden of problems, illness, and depression is of another kind. It is about having faith that the child Jesus came here on earth especially FOR YOU, for you and for you, to offer – as Jesus of Nazareth – comfort to you and support to your deprived soul.
And Jesus offers to all of us: “Come to me, all those who are sad and suffer.”
What else would be the purpose of Christmas?
Yours sincerely, Carlo L. Weichert, Health Practitioner, Communication and Hypnosis Therapist from La Asomada Tel: 0034 928 532 549
(Translated and edited from a text by Carlo L. Weichert)
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