Its almost Christmas, a holiday that stirs a veritable cornucopia of emotions ranging from eager anticipation to cynicism, for spiritual joy to acute depression. Try as hard as some folks do, there is no escaping the complex reality that is Christmas.

It is at one and the same time the most materialistic time of the year as well as also being the holiest.

More than any other time of the year we express a universal longing for peace even in the midst of bitter conflict. But the day comes and goes and wars rage on.

We hope for miracles but when those miracles come we often over look them.

We remember past Christmases with a nostalgia that contains a touch of the mythical.

I love the festive light and the colorful decorations and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I love the lovely old time Christmas carols, but the part that creates in me the deepest sense of the season’s beauty is to go out into the garden in the first hour of darkness and open myself to the beauty of the first stars as they appear in the dark blue firmament and sing softly the old familiar carols and listen with my whole being for the ancient hopes and dreams to drift across the land on the waves of silence knowing that the human race is itself a virtual galaxy of possibilities residing in a universe of infinite potentialities and in that comprehension is the everlasting hope of Christmas.