Christmas in Light and Shadow

«Because Mass was held jointly with the adult psychiatric ward, there were Christmas pageants featuring convicted sex offenders locked away for life, even murderers, so every shepherd had a giant orderly standing behind him ready to step in. I even saw a Joseph in handcuffs and a Virgin Mary in a straitjacket»: recalling his childhood in the brilliant When Everything Will Be as It Has Never Been (Marsilio 2015), Joachim Meyerhoff—son of the director of a German psychiatric clinic—remembers this detail from those unusual Christmas celebrations. A detail that captures the many lights and shadows that the holidays carry with them. Because beyond the lights and decorations, the traditional recipes, the carols, the joy of gifts and countless ornaments, in remembering the arrival of Jesus we celebrate hospitality—a value at the heart of any community. The light of Christmas is the gesture of that Roman family who, when a desperate crisis erupted starting at noon on December 24th, did not hesitate to make room in their home for a boy with severe disability. The shadow of Christmas is the article that in 2004 Mariangela Bertolini wrote about Rossana, in her seventies, alone with her son Massimo, 41 years old and profoundly disabled; the shadow is when the holiday is just like any other day, or perhaps a bit emptier than the rest, because even the people paid to help are not there. "So the two of us on that beautiful day," Rossana recounted, "will wait for a visit, perhaps, a grandchild, some friend of Fede Luce." Who knows.