Merry Christmas`

I feel it incumbent upon me to be a voice crying in the wilderness, just in case there are any out there who think that the unmistakable good will that pervades during this hoiday season has no direct connection to the birth of Christ. I have noticed over the last few years, a marked increase in other "reasons" to celebrate, an effort to diminish the Christian "reason for the season."
Kwanzaa is completely worthwhile; the celebration of Hannukah is totally legitimate; the winter solstice is awe-inspiring. They can enhance the season's enjoyment.
However, the effort to try to remove Christ from Christmas will yield a commensurate loss of Christmas spirit; the celebration will seem somehow empty, the good will, not "enough:" endeavors to engender those feelings will echo somewhere in the chambers of the heart that have been emptied of the one Eternal source of joy.
Humanity is not solely of the animals, not fully of the genus "mammal." Evolution is a principle of science, but is not All in All. As the poet Wordsworth expressed, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:/ The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,/ Hath had elsewhere its setting,/And cometh from afar:/ Not in entire forgetfulness,/ And not in utter nakedness,/ But trailing clouds of glory do we come/ From God, who is our home:/ Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"
I believe that the best scientists have much in common with the greatest poets, and perhaps even with the prophets. I believe that there is really very little that separates the spirit of inquiry from the beckoning of Mystery. One blogger, Rich Blundell, shared this observation: "A scientist's Christmas has humility and dignity both. It is humble enough to admit that our knowledge of the sacred will always be incomplete, without the need to declare 'war' on anything but ignorance. There is plenty of mystery to celebrate and plenty of ignorance to fear - Merry Christmas."
This year, I suggest that instead of denying the "knowing" deep within every human soul, that we instead acknowledge it, that we, as it were, give room for it. See where it leads. Celebrate it all, and celebrate Him who is the Source of it all. "Come in, and know me better, man!"