“Jólabókaflóð” refers to an Icelandic Christmas tradition where people exchange books on Christmas Eve and spend the night reading, often while enjoying hot drinks and treats. It emphasizes knowledge, culture, and quiet togetherness during Christmas.
Christmas Eve arrives not as a solution, but as a pause.
In a year weighed down by conflict, economic anxiety, climate uncertainty, and social fatigue, this pause matters. It is one of the few nights left in the global calendar that invites people—not institutions—to reflect. Not loudly. Not performatively. Simply, and together.
Much has been written about what divides us. Christmas Eve asks a quieter question: what still holds?
Across cities and villages, differences momentarily soften. A neighbour who rarely speaks knocks with food. A worker stays back so another can go home. A stranger offers directions, tea, patience. These gestures are small, but they are not insignificant. They are the social glue that survives even when trust in systems erodes.
The enduring power of Christmas does not lie in theology or tradition alone. It lies in its insistence on shared vulnerability. The central story is not of triumph, but of fragility—a child born without security, dependent on care, welcomed by the ordinary. In a world that increasingly celebrates strength, certainty, and speed, this story still matters.
In India’s plural social fabric, Christmas has also evolved into something broader than faith. It is a civic moment—one where celebration crosses belief, where labour is shared across communities, where participation does not require permission. This quiet inclusiveness, often overlooked, is one of the country’s understated strengths.
Even now, amid polarisation and pressure, people continue to show up for one another in unrecorded ways. Nurses work double shifts. Drivers wait patiently. Teachers check in on students. Families make room—physically and emotionally—for those who have nowhere else to go.
Christmas Eve does not deny hardship. It acknowledges it and insists, gently, that hardship is not the whole story.
Hope, in this context, is not optimism. It is persistence. It is the choice to keep caring in an era that rewards indifference. It is the belief that community can survive without spectacle, and that solidarity does not need slogans.
Tonight, the lights may dim tomorrow, the routines will return, and the world’s problems will remain unresolved. But for a few hours, something important is reaffirmed: that compassion is still practised, that generosity is still possible, and that shared humanity—though strained—is not broken.
That, perhaps, is the real gift of Christmas Eve. Not the promise of a better world overnight, but the reminder that people continue, quietly, to build one another up—one night, one gesture, one act at a time.
