Merry Christmas

Christmas is the promise of a new beginning, of love despite ourselves, of forgiveness for things we've done or thought.

Sometimes I wonder if how we commemorate the season does a disservice to this.

We have twenty centuries of accretion of traditions built up over top this event, or imported from others, which interfere with our view of Christmas. Like the'pot-latch' of gift-giving, where we tell ourselves we're imitating the Three Wise Men with our gifts. Nordic greenery. Saints from Roman times who favored children. Carrolling from Elizabethan and Victorian times. In our culture and times, it boils down to family--being with them, celebrating with them, worshiping with them, feasting with them.

And that brilliant surge of light more intense than a million suns bursting in our time and space that night, to console us and promise us of more than our worldly goods could ever give us, that was the ultimate gift. The proof that we matter, that we count, that we are not forgotten, that we are wanted, that we belong.

That is Christmas.

So Merry Christmas to all.

And to all--a good night!