The gift of relationship, beyond consumerism
In the wealthy West, and specifically in my own Italy, we witness every year the great consumerist festival (on the rise, despite increasing poverty) that obscures the sacredness of the Christian Celebration (less and less felt despite the high number of baptized) in the name of the profane Santa Claus
The extensive and publicized commercial offerings put up especially for children, complicated and expensive gifts for the demand of parents and grandparents who can afford it.
Different in so-called developing countries, where poverty is much more incident and widespread.
In contrast, the minority Christian faith is authentic and alive, as Pope Francis also testified in his September 18 audience about his trip to Asia and Oceania. And suffered as well, as evidenced by the widespread reality of persecution toward Catholic and non-Catholic Christians.
In my Italian experience, adults, including grandmothers and grandfathers, are lavish with gifts. And after delivery on Christmas Day, chatting among themselves and attending to other things, they often forget that that feast is a gift of love in the relationship especially with children and young people.
In the meantime, the little ones play on their own, with the simplest playthings suitable for creative constructions and manipulations.
As a grandfather, I would like then, proposing it to my “colleagues” as well, to build, for Christmas, with my two older granddaughters a Shanghai, giving each other, through this game, the “Kairos” of relation.
So much satisfaction, zero cost because forty wooden sticks for skewers and a little paint were enough.
The money saved for the many expensive toys planned could thus be used for gestures of solidarity toward children and their families in need.
This would be a disruptive, perhaps courageous, choice at a time of year characterized by the extreme exercise of the ordinary shambles of individualistic, end-all consumption.
I have so far highlighted the concepts of gift and gift in italics to express their complementarity, but also their difference.
A gift is an object offered freely out of courtesy or affection in relationships of custom or
familiarity, usually on certain occasions.
While the gift has a material and quantitative connotation, the gift takes on an intangible valence of relationship that communicates attention, care, affection. For a believer, both are grounded in faith in Jesus as love.
The former in a sense has as an expression of love corporal works of mercy (e.g., feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless).
The second, spiritual works of mercy (e.g., consoling the afflicted, counseling the doubtful, teaching the ignorant, admonishing sinners).
Giving does not necessarily imply a gift, although the latter can be a concrete/material expression of it.
Grandparents/and like parents and other loved ones, on certain occasions, in the context of meaningful relationships of affection, give gifts.
Returning to the Shanghai, the idea was provided to me by a granddaughter with a pile of colorful striped sticks. It was a gift, forgotten in a drawer, from my maternal grandfather who often offered me the gift of playing with it.
In Shanghai, the competition begins by holding the deck and spreading the hand so that the sticks spread out and intertwine with each other. Then, each player in turn draws a single stick away, taking care not to move any others. The one who correctly at the end has drawn the most sticks wins.
For children, these operations are fun and useful exercises in sensorimotor skills, but also, for grandmothers and grandfathers, a practical possibility, particularly suited to a child’s concrete thinking, to pass on to them a testimony of life and thus realize in everyday playfulness a link between generations.
For a grandparent, in fact, net of his reduced fine motor skills, more than just a game of skill, it is a metaphor for existence or rather a way of interpreting and conducting it.
I learned this from the novel I just read by Erri De Luca: The Shanghai Rules.
Here are some examples: The intertwined sticks represent the chaos of chance and the game the attempt to bring order. Choosing sticks to parade involves mental representation and the ability to imagine order, priorities and sequences of “parading.”
Each operation changes the structure toward simplification and order. It involves the exercise of “slow tempo,” the analysis of individual positions in context, the patience of fine psychomotor exercise. It is played by two or more with competitive rules.
I would like it to be transformed, between grandfather and grandson, into cooperative where one does not win alone, but together, leaving aside different limitations and valuing each other’s skills.
For the grandfather, avoiding senile uncertainty in fine movements and instead exercising analytical and reflective skills in considering the context to decide which stick to operate on, with which priorities and sequences.
For the grandchild to enhance his or her sense-motor skills, letting the grandparent advise and guide him or her in making choices.
Finally, the Shanghai is not bought, but built together. All it takes is some skewer sticks and paint.
All the grandparents in the world can give this gift to their grandchildren, playing with them in palaces, houses and shacks.
With the gift of the relationship of love that the Christmas of Jesus proclaims to men.
STATISTICAL DATA (indicative because collected by different bodies, with different methodologies, survey and research tools, classification criteria.
Religions
- World population: 8 billion
- Christians in the world 2.4 billion (Website “Statista”)
Of which:
– Catholics in the world 1.4 billion increasing in four continents, especially Africa and Asia and decreasing
decreasing in Europe by almost 500,000 in recent years (Vatican City, Fides Agency).
– Catholics in Italy
Those baptized with the Catholic rite are 97.67 percent.
They declare themselves:
Catholic 61% of whom 25% practice
of other Christian religions 7%
of other religions 2%
non-religious 28%
non-responsive 2%
(IPSOS sample survey) - Muslims 1.8 billion
- Hindus 1.1
- Buddhists 500,000
- Nonreligious 1.2 billion
(Pew research Center)
Persecution of Christians today
Over 350 million in more than 50 countries.
Various levels and type of hostility with attitudes, words or actions toward people and things; highest level 12 countries, middle 16, lowest 23. First country in persecutions North Korea, followed. by Somalia, Libya, Yemen, heavily Islamized states and then mainly African states plagued by tribal daguerre and Islamic extremism.
(Open Doors and Terres des hommes)
Poverty
Worldwide, an estimated 700 million people or 9 percent of the population (World Bank) are estimated to be in absolute or extreme poverty (per capita income less than 2.15 euros die-64.5 months).
In Europe, overall assessments are not possible due to the different criteria for defining poverty ,absolute between states.
In Italy, absolute poverty has increased in the last twenty years from 3% to almost 10% and affects 5.7 million people. But the figure is not comparable with the world figure because the yardstick for assessment is an income of 640 euros per capita per month or less.
(ISTAT)
Estimated Christmas spending in Italy
223 euros per capita in 2023 with a 13 percent increase over 2022 for a total figure of more than 13
billion euros.
(Confesercenti survey)
Source
Image
- Image digitally created by spazio + spadoni