In my Galician homeland, we ask it with an ancient, almost instinctive naturalness. It’s not curiosity, it’s our roots. It’s the most human way we have of asking about history, about blood, about lineage. We don’t just ask about the surname; we ask who dreamed you up, who sustained you, who taught you to walk and to love.
No one comes into the world alone. We arrive as children; we come from someone and for someone. We are otherness: a self that is completed in a you, and that you have a family name.
From the Holy Family to our homes
Being a family is the best gift God has given to humankind.
Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family; next January 1st we celebrate the Feast of Mary, Mother of God. A common thread runs between the two: the family as the cradle of humanity, with woman as mother and central figure.
Juan Antonio Pérez López, general director of IESE (1978-1984), prophesied it in 1995: “If the 21st century works it will be because women will have an ever greater participation in the organization of society; because women are the nucleus of the family, and the family, the basis of society” [1].
Woman, work and inner unity
Today, young women accumulate degrees, master’s degrees, languages, and responsibilities. They juggle—or try to—multiple tasks without losing their sense of self. But they need to anchor themselves in inner unity: being a person, being a woman, being and creating a family.
- A woman who works outside the home doesn’t escape her family; she expands it. She embraces both career and home with clarity and joy.
- Fulfillment integrates both spheres. Reconciliation involves prioritizing; work doesn’t stifle love, nor is family relegated to the margins.
Tensions that demand maturity, dialogue, and courage. Temporary or permanent decisions, always for the personal and family good. Tom Peters saw this clearly in a chapter of his book Reimagine the Company entitled: “Women Are Coming Roaring.” The market knows it. It awakens longings, desires, economic independence. Women buy a lot, but their true power lies in building family, future, and relationships [2].
The family, a school of leadership
Excellence stems from inner unity, which resonates on a personal, professional, and social level. Let’s change society by strengthening businesses; if we want to change businesses, let’s strengthen families; and to change families, let’s change each one of us.
An international study (2001) showed that key competencies of business leaders—teamwork, communication, negotiation—are learned, practiced, and inherited at home. The family is the first management school [3].
Everyday examples:
- Teamwork : A family works, or doesn’t, depending on the ability to divide tasks, recognize talents; no one is superfluous, everyone rows together.
- Communication : Around a table, after-dinner conversation, a walk; dialogue builds a home; a company that engages in dialogue builds a future.
- Managing change : Family relationships are a constantly shifting and unstable balance: with children growing up, routines transforming, and priorities rotating. Change is natural, fruitful, and demands updating without losing touch with roots.
- Negotiation : Light on or off? Window open? What program should we watch? Living together teaches us. Compromising in small matters teaches understanding and generosity…
- Developing collaborators : older siblings mentor younger ones and also help through osmotic contagion. Cascading learning. It doesn’t cost money and it builds character.
Companies invest in courses, but the family forges character, patience, and authority without humiliation. It generates human, emotional, and moral capital: loving, serving, and caring for those in need [4].
That is why family is necessary for business, for society, for growing in humanity; necessary for the world, today and always.
Messengers of peace from the manger
The world seems like a ruined city, and it needs to be rebuilt; in the face of fear and pain, Christmas calls us to spread the word:
Peace exists, it is in our midst!
The family teaches that message as the first school of tenderness.
“Sometimes we are tempted to be Christians by keeping a prudent distance from the wounds of the Lord. But Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He expects us to renounce seeking those personal or communal shelters that allow us to keep our distance from the heart of the human storm, so that we may truly accept coming into contact with the concrete existence of others and know the power of tenderness” (Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 270).
Who are you related to?
From Heaven and Earth: from a God who becomes a child in the Holy Family, and from the one that God Himself has given me, with lights and shadows, that initiates us into Trinitarian love.
As in Nazareth —humble work, prayerful dialogue, fruitful dedication—, be a messenger of that peace in 2026.
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References
[1] Pérez López, JA (1995). Cited in analysis of business leadership and family. IESE Business School.
[2] Peters, T. (1997). Re-imagine the company. Management 2000.
[3] International study on leadership skills (2001). Analysis of skills acquisition in family contexts.
[4] Francisco. (2013). Evangelii gaudium, 270. Holy See.
The videos included in this article are courtesy of the Braña family, from their Christmas 2025 celebration.