Merry Christmas

For those who will be celebrating tomorrow, I want to share a piece of sermon that has been said at my home congregation (the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton) since I was a child, "Christmas Always Begins at Midnight" by A. Powell Davies:

...in legend upon legend, and story after story, Christmas always begins, not with daybreak and the coming of the morning - but at midnight. It was at midnight that the primitive observances began - or as near it as their reckoning could bring them. It was in the darkest hour of the night - not in the glow of morning - that the shepherds of the legend heard the angels sing. And of course, the Three Wise Men were guided, not by the sun, but by a star.

The legends have grown both beautiful and fanciful. Yet they have never drifted out of the darkness into a premature daylight. They have stayed quite close to the inner truth from which they draw their substance: the truth that man must find his faith, not in the daylight but in the dark. If he is ever to come to the light of morning, he must carry his own light with him through the night.

Please enjoy this day and give light and love to the world.

-Jesse