"Discover the magic of Christmas", "enjoy a magical Christmas", "immerse yourself in the magical world of Christmas"... Please, let's stop using this kind of slogans that confuse children and adults. There is nothing magical about Christmas, although it is a mystery. Let me explain:
Four weeks before the commemoration of the Birth of the Lord, the Church proposes a time of preparation that we call Advent; but the commercial Christmas, that month and a half that gets us to consume more than in the rest of the year, has taken the lead over the liturgical year and has advanced one or two more weeks the expectation of the feast with the lighting of lights, imported offers and all the paraphernalia that goes with it.
Extending this "magical" Christmas period manages, in an abracadabra, to balance the profit and loss accounts of many companies and to cheer up, as if by magic, the revenue of the municipalities that invest in lighting, street markets and leisure activities.
Relating Christmas and magic makes sense, because we all have deep down inside the childish desire to see our wishes fulfilled in an incredible way as when we found the gifts we had asked for in our letter.
At this time of the year, we have the illusion that "life" will grant us what we ask for, that "luck" will be with us and we will win the lottery, that a "fairy" will direct her magic wand towards us helping us to find the love of our life or that a "second class angel" will earn her wings helping us to solve that unsolvable problem in our own Bedford Falls.
The truth is that, as much as the romantic comedies that flood the platforms these days insist on showing us a happy time of the year, where everything turns out well in the end; when the holidays pass we will discover, once again, that the supposed "magic" of these dates is seen the trick like a bad conjurer of a fairground barrack.
And the illusion that seemed like it was going to make us happy forever ends up dissolving at the returns counter of department stores in front of clerks overwhelmed by having to assemble the next commercial claim.
Relating Christmas and magic makes sense, because the West has relegated the faith that once gave meaning to its traditions in favor of fantasy or superstition. In magic there is a perfect place for that "there will be something", in reference to transcendence.
We do not know very well what or how it will be, we do not know very well if they are angels or fairies or elves or elves, we do not know very well if our family or health are a gift from God or from life or from the government of the day, nor do we care to investigate much.
It was Chesterton who said that when you stop believing in God, you soon believe in anything. And we are proving that with this magical Christmas fever.
Relating Christmas to magic makes sense, because one of the feasts of this liturgical season is the Epiphany, or manifestation of God to the magi. But beware, the word magician applied to those who came from the East to worship the child does not refer to supposed supernatural powers, but to their wisdom or broad scientific knowledge in times when astrology and astronomy had not been separated.
Therefore, to qualify Christmas as magical is to reduce it to glitter trails. Christmas is not magical, hey, it's divine! Jesus is not Houdini, nor David Copperfield, not even the fantastic Harry Potter or Doctor Strange. The Jesus who is born at Christmas is not an illusionist, he is God himself! Neither is he a magician like the magicians of the East, nor like the best scientists of today who amaze the world by mastering the laws of physics. He is not wise, he is the eternal Wisdom who, as the book of Proverbs poeticizes, "played with the ball of the earth" while Abba created space and time and ordered the galaxies and dark matter.
What we celebrate at Christmas is that we have really won the lottery. Put a price, if not, at auction, on the eternal life that Jesus has given you. There are not millions to pay for it.
What we celebrate at Christmas is that we have truly found the love of our life. A love that is unconditional, patient, compassionate and forever. A love that doesn't end after 90 minutes and the label of The End. A love to the point of giving one's life Who wouldn't want to let oneself be loved like this?
What we celebrate at Christmas is that, truly, problems that seemed unsolvable have a solution. Because God, being born as man, rolls up his sleeves with us, gets into our mud and accompanies and helps us on our journey.
Christmas is not magic, but it is a mystery in the biblical sense, meaning that sign whose meaning is hidden. Isn't it admirable that behind that sign of a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (something so unmagical, so ordinary) hides God himself offering to share his divinity with us?
In these days of preparation for Christmas, while strolling along one of those beautifully decorated streets
If you look into the eyes of that person walking next to you, your husband, your wife, your son, your granddaughter... You will discover in her gaze something much more magical than any amusement park papier-mâché decoration. It is a divine breath that lives inside her and that she will be able to see inside you. That is the mystery that we are going to celebrate and that remains hidden to so many, the admirable exchange between God and the human being. It is the divine Christmas.
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
