Presence, Not Presents

We’ve mistaken buying for belonging.

Every December, the lights go up and the ritual repeats itself: the scramble for gifts, the assumption that cost equals care. But the real luxury isn’t wrapped. It’s time. Time to make a proper pot of tea. Time to cook a meal without rushing. Time to sit, listen, and stay.

For many, the season is spent in silence. In the UK alone, around 1.5 million older people spend Christmas by themselves. In Japan, extreme social withdrawal - hikikomori - has become a recognised social condition, quietly expanding year after year. In the United States, loneliness has been described as a public-health concern. The details differ, but the pattern doesn’t.

Excess fills the other side of the picture. Across Europe, households waste over half the food they buy, with December bringing a predictable spike. In countries like Germany and France, food waste rises by as much as 30% to 40% during the holidays. In the UK, household rubbish increases by nearly a third at Christmas. In the U.S, the numbers are larger, but the story is the same: abundance ending in the bin.

We know this story well, and yet we keep repeating it, as if more effort, better messaging, or cleverer consumption might finally fix it.

What works, instead, is simpler. Practical. Ordinary.

Since 2015, for Movimento Metropolitano, the response hasn’t been to moralise about sustainability, but to organise around it. Surplus food is cooked; scraps are reused. Our zero-waste cooking workshops turn overlooked ingredients into proper meals, whilst pizza-making sessions and other creative activities pull children, parents and all generations to the same table. We celebrate the hands that grew the food and the hands that prepared it. What is left over is shared. There is enough for everyone.

There is nothing revolutionary in this, and that is the point. It is a universal thing. As Andrea Rasca wrote in The Table and My Five Essential Reads of 2025, societies around the world have always leaned on the rituals of the meal. The surest way to ease a person's isolation is to cook together and sit long enough for the conversation to begin. It is simple, but it is enough.

Research consistently shows that people who eat together report lower levels of stress and loneliness, not because meals solve anything, but because they slow things down. They create pauses. They make room.

Across cultures, the table has always been for this. A meal marks the time and creates a rhythm that keeps people from drifting. Long before the word loneliness was used, it was eased with a chair, a plate, and enough food to go around.

Abundance has very little to do with having more. It’s yesterday’s roast becoming today’s stew. It’s an extra place set without ceremony. We don’t need more things. We need more reasons to gather.

Pull up a chair. Stay a while.

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