In our busy societies, holidays can be rare oases: sources of plentiful free time that is so elusive the rest of the year. Time, that is to say, available for what we truly want to do and not just what we have to do.
How someone stewards their free time is as good a window into a human soul as anything. And what most people seek when not constrained by duties is companionship, whether they realise this or not (in both senses of that word). Companionship — not just company — is what Christmas and other holidays should replenish us with. But if the talk of a loneliness epidemic is anything to go by, we are becoming strikingly bad at achieving it.
The emotional struggle for companionship — a struggle of the heart, which we increasingly seem to be losing — could well be rooted in a struggle of the mind, an ever weaker ability to grasp what companionship even means. If that’s the case, one need not look far for a culprit.