The Light That Unites – Christmas Time

The light of Christmas is not just a glow that brightens the streets or a seasonal decoration: it is a universal language.
In the northern countries, where winter seems endless and darkness stretches across the days, every lit candle becomes a small act of resistance, a gesture of shared warmth. It’s as if the flame holds within itself the promise of the sun’s return.

And yet, even where natural light never fails — in sun-soaked places where palm trees sway in the breeze and the sea mirrors the sky — Christmas lights still manage to add something special. I remember the illuminated palms of Miami Beach, the golden threads tracing the trunks and climbing through the fronds, creating an unusual harmony between the tropical heat and the spirit of the holidays. That image, perhaps precisely because of the contrast, brought me back to the truest sense of warmth: not the warmth of climate, but that born of gestures, of sharing, of feeling part of a single light.

And perhaps this very warmth, this common light, can also be found in learning and work. Designing, imagining, and building together is another way of lighting small flames. When, as students, we build scale models, discuss design changes, or seek solutions together under the artificial sky of Tulip or around the bright table of the Orchard Heliodon, something similar happens: the group warms up, thoughts intertwine, and ideas spark like embers from a shared fire.

Through dialogue and collaboration, we grow not only as designers but above all as people. It is a path of mutual discovery, of listening and complicity, where every shared effort becomes part of a greater light.
And those experiences — the hours spent together, the ideas igniting, the shared fatigue — remain. They continue to illuminate us even years later, when our profession becomes reality. Perhaps then, in the midst of a construction site or at the start of a new project, that memory of teamwork, that warmth born of collaboration, will return.
A light that never stops shining, within and around us.