Christmas is mothers

“Creating a home that everyone enjoys and works well takes skill, time, dedication and empathy.

Above all else, being the architect of everyone else's well-being is an act of immense generosity,” writes Deborah Levy in

And Levy continues: “This task continues to be perceived as eminently feminine.

Consequently, there are all kinds of words to belittle that immense effort.”

And I add: Christmas is one of those words.

Christmas is that time of the year when millions of mothers work to exhaustion for a party destined for intimate disappointment, social criticism and generalized ignoring.

So these days, while millions of women go to the market (to "the square" when they live in the North), they reserve prawns, locate tablecloths, remove the ornaments from the tree in the attic, cook well beyond their means, compare the offers of nougats, they prepare the houses to receive guests, they buy toys with impossible prices and ask the neighbor for a chair because one is missing in the living room, there will be analyzes on the excessive consumerism of these parties, the waste of light, their own excess calories, all kinds of sophisticated gifts still lifes,

love stories related to the chance of the lottery and rigorous studies on average spending per inhabitant.

One more year, everything will be talked about except them.

And so, the immense effort of many will be dwarfed until the architects of Christmas disappear.

When I read Deborah Levy that women could be the "architects of happiness" it seemed to me an almost divine power and I recognized myself as a possible goddess.

I confess that I even believed it.

I thought that she would be able to build the foundations of a happy home and I also believed that she "had" to do it.

And, how could it be otherwise, years after arduous efforts, I fell into the abyss that always (and without exception) implies the feminine "should be".

Not surprisingly, maternity and scam are written with the same letters.

And the worst thing is that it is a trap that does not depend on each one, but the entire society helps mothers (and wives) to believe that we own a power that we do not have (because no human being can be the architect of the well-being of others ) and to take responsibility for a task doomed to fail before it even begins.

A) Yes,

Family architecture is that which sooner or later will turn out to be ruinous, because where we thought to build a castle we only found desolation or, in the best of cases, a small tent.

Well, that weather is revealed with particular determination at Christmas.

At this time, the loving sacrifice of millions of women is hidden with special care, as if it were an important secret.

Christmas is for mothers, we all know that, but it is important to hide it, to pretend that their efforts did not exist in order to continue "believing in magic".

The problem is that magic becomes a lie when it involves the silent sacrifice of another person.

And so, Christmas ends up seeming to us as false as the very mask of unhappiness.

That is why these days we are harassed in networks,

magazines and shopping malls with images of smiling, picture-perfect families dressed in identical reindeer pajamas (pets included).

Families all that seem to us liars without even knowing them.

How can it be that the loving effort of so many "welfare architects" is turned into a cheap disguise?

It happens because hiding them means hiding their love, even forgetting it, actually pretending it doesn't exist.

And it also happens because women are at the same time the creators of this vital architecture and its victims.

“No woman is fully integrated into the institutions conceived by male consciousness,” wrote Adrianne Rich.

And Deborah Levy answered him in another book,

with the following pearl: “For me it began to become evident that Maternity was an institution conceived by the masculine conscience.

This masculine consciousness was masculine unconsciousness.

He needed her partners, who were also mothers, to trample on their own desires and cater first to the male desires and then to everyone else's.

We tried to nullify our desires and found that we were good at it.

And we invested a large part of our vital energy in creating a home for our children and our men.”

For this reason, because of how complex life is and how intertwined love can be with disappointment, surrender with abuse, and generosity with personal renunciation, I think we should recognize those who once made an effort to be the architects of our well-being.

Christmas is mothers, and their daughters and sons we can stop pretending we don't know.

And by the way, take away the burden of continuing to be so.

And even free us from the weight of their commitment.

It is true that everything is mixed up and that it is difficult to distinguish some feelings from others.

But when in doubt, it is best to always start with love.

Because deep down that's the only thing that really distinguishes one Christmas from another, one family from another, one life from another.

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