Christmas Eve 2015

I'll just link to this.  My comment on it is there, so take that as incorporated here by reference (as the lawyers say).

And there's this, courtesy of Charlie Pierce.  It's a goodish sentiment, if not the best possible for the season.  It gets at something about Christmas that makes it valuable, whether we keep it as a religious holiday (and most of us don't, not really) or as a secular one.

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

 —Charles Dickens, 1843

 I do think there is more to it than goodwill and nice feelings, but frankly, without those nothing good gets started.  The Holy Spirit can trouble the waters; but it's up to us to get in and do something with it.