🟡 Christmas Eve. 8:37 p.m.

Glasses clink. Candles flicker.

Conversations are still finding their rhythm.

At that precise moment, everything is already there.

Roles. Alliances. Tensions. Silences.

Christmas is a theatre. And the curtain rises without rehearsal.

For those who practice fine observation, Christmas Eve is not an interlude.

It is a scene of human intelligence in its rawest form.

The gifts arrive.

Some are opened too quickly.

Others with care.

There are those who look at the object.

And those who look at the face of the one who offers it.

Here lies the first rule of the Grammar of Intelligence: intention.

The real gift is never what is given, but what is understood.

And sometimes, what goes unseen makes more noise than what is offered.

8:37 p.m.: dinner is served.

One guest takes the floor and sets the tempo.

Another regulates without speaking.

A third carefully avoids certain topics — not out of fear, but out of mastery.

This is where interaction reveals itself.

Who feeds the table.

Who freezes it.

Who creates space for others.

True leadership, even on this evening, does not seek the spotlight.

It lets things flow.

Between two courses, a silence.

A dense silence.

No one breaks it right away.

That silence is a signal.

This is the key element many miss: observation.

Knowing when to remain silent is already a form of power.

In a living room as in an executive committee.

Then come the laughs.

Humor.

Sometimes irony.

Sometimes escape.

This is where influence is at play.

Subtle.

Invisible.

Yet perfectly effective.

Why does HUMINT decoding make a Christmas Eve unforgettable?

Because it turns an evening into a fine reading of reality.

Because it allows one to feel before concluding.

Because it reminds us that the final step — the decision — is prepared well before midnight, often in a glance, a gesture, an unspoken word.

Leaders instinctively know this:

a Christmas Eve dinner and a boardroom obey the same human laws.

The same fragilities.

The same ego dynamics.

The same discreet levers.

Christmas is not just a warm moment.

It is a full-scale lesson in human intelligence.

To those who know how to read between the lines,

observe without intruding,

understand without imposing,

I wish a rich Christmas Eve…

not only in gifts,

but in human lucidity.

Merry Christmas.

And let us remember:

even tonight, what matters most is not said.