Celebrate the Light

"Whenever we feel pessimistic concerning the future of humanity upon this troubled planet, we can always remember this: that with all his fears and failings, man has yet somehow managed to put the brightest of his festivals in the darkest part of the year....at mid-winter, he celebrates most universally his hope and joy.

The hardihood of this festival, continuing, as it has, through many thousands of years, and rising, stage by stage, from primitive frenzy to pagan jubilation and finally to the symbolism of Christian observance, gives us true cause for confidence and reassurance. When it is darkest, man celebrates the light. When the earth is most desolate, he carols his joy. When the harshest and bleakest of the seasons is upon him, he can turn to gentleness, kindness and forbearance. His courage can rise superior to his circumstances.

Perhaps this is the thought above all others that Christmas can cheer us with this year. It is the inner significance, the spiritual essence of Christmas that can mean most to us, for once. For certainly we shall not find it easy to be spontaneously happy in a world so full of miseries. Nor should we.... If we are to celebrate the ancient festival of light overcoming darkness, it must be in the full knowledge of how dense is the darkness against which the light must shine."

Christmas Always Begins at Midnight, A. Powell Davies

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

May you hear angels sing this holiday, and always.

"It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heaven’s all gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
the love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
and hear the angels sing."

Edmund Hamilton Sears

Quote of the Day

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other. Mother Teresa

Spread It Around

Happiness, it seems, is contagious. Sneeze some on someone today.