Singles: for a flawless Christmas
Christmas usually rhymes with family and children. This is not always easy for singles. Here are some ideas for a more serene December 25th.
"This year, I'm going to celebrate my first Christmas alone with my parents," says Cecile with a hint of apprehension. At almost 30 years old, this nurse is now the only single in a sibling of four. Until last year, the family home was not empty around December 25, "the only occasion of the year when we were all together," recalls the young woman. But this time, his brothers and sisters will celebrate Christmas in their in-law. If Cecile doesn't blame anyone and gets along "very well" with her parents, she still dreads this period a little: "I feel that I don't approach this party as usual, in joy."
Arthur, 35, goes further. "The approach to Christmas stresses me a little more every year!" Single, too, he hardly lives the long festive meals where his sisters and brothers-in-law "only talk about their children! Although I am interested in what they are going through, their educational concerns, I have the impression that there is no reciprocity." Cecile and Arthur belong to this generation of single thirtysomethings who have not chosen their state of life and sometimes live it as a pain. Suffering for not being chosen by another, for not having children, for waiting for an answer to the nagging question: "Lord, where do you want me?" It's hard not to feel out of step with the rest of the family, whose members seem to have found their place over the years. And this is particularly heavy at Christmas time.
"Our single son taught us to welcome the other"
Is this party the preserve of families? It is clear that the images, the values it conveys, are unequivocal. "Christmas immediately evokes the wonderful and refers to childhood," explains psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Genevieve de Taisne. But when you're single, you're not a child anymore, and at the same time you don't have a child yet." This holiday can remind the single person - as well as widowed or separated persons, for that matter - of his loneliness. For Bishop Luc Ravel of Strasbourg, the initiator of the Notre-Dame de l'Écoute movements for singles and single people, aged 35 to 50, these apprehensions simply reveal the vocation of man, contained in this word of Genesis: "He is not not good that man is alone." Christmas therefore highlights "what the Church always affirms: the family is not only constitutive of society, it is structuring for the person, for his well-being and his development."
"This year, I'm going to celebrate my first Christmas alone with my parents," says Cecile with a hint of apprehension. At almost 30 years old, this nurse is now the only single in a sibling of four. Until last year, the family home was not empty around December 25, "the only occasion of the year when we were all together," recalls the young woman. But this time, his brothers and sisters will celebrate Christmas in their in-law. If Cecile doesn't blame anyone and gets along "very well" with her parents, she still dreads this period a little: "I feel that I don't approach this party as usual, in joy."
Arthur, 35, goes further. "The approach to Christmas stresses me a little more every year!" Single, too, he hardly lives the long festive meals where his sisters and brothers-in-law "only talk about their children! Although I am interested in what they are going through, their educational concerns, I have the impression that there is no reciprocity." Cecile and Arthur belong to this generation of single thirtysomethings who have not chosen their state of life and sometimes live it as a pain. Suffering for not being chosen by another, for not having children, for waiting for an answer to the nagging question: "Lord, where do you want me?" It's hard not to feel out of step with the rest of the family, whose members seem to have found their place over the years. And this is particularly heavy at Christmas time.
"Our single son taught us to welcome the other"
Is this party the preserve of families? It is clear that the images, the values it conveys, are unequivocal. "Christmas immediately evokes the wonderful and refers to childhood," explains psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Genevieve de Taisne. But when you're single, you're not a child anymore, and at the same time you don't have a child yet." This holiday can remind the single person - as well as widowed or separated persons, for that matter - of his loneliness. For Bishop Luc Ravel of Strasbourg, the initiator of the Notre-Dame de l'Écoute movements for singles and single people, aged 35 to 50, these apprehensions simply reveal the vocation of man, contained in this word of Genesis: "He is not not good that man is alone." Christmas therefore highlights "what the Church always affirms: the family is not only constitutive of society, it is structuring for the person, for his well-being and his development."
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