I took Eden and Lily out in the dark night just now for a walk around the neighborhood to see the decorations, the beautiful...and yes, the gaudy. Lily periodically screamed with delight, enunciating every syllable, "Chwistmas....wights!!!" They were ecstatic. Unimpressive by day, the lights are breathtaking at night.

You must read in this month's issue of Touchstone this musing (free without subscription) by Wilfred McClay on why Christmas music cannot be all bright, all sleigh-bells and joy. For without remembering the long, dark night, the brooding bleak midwinter made desolate by Satan's power, we might forget what good news it is that Christ came, the light shining in darkness.

"There are constant reminders of this darkness, if one has ears to hear them, running through the great liturgy of our Christmas carols, with their memorable evocations of bleak midwinter, snow on snow, sad and lonely plains, the curse, the half-spent night....The older lyrics are laced with just such evocations of darkness. They help us remember why it is symbolically right, even if historically wrong, to celebrate Christ’s birth in winter."

We would do well this winter to "hold in our minds a keen awareness of the darkness into which Christ came, and still must come, for our sake."