Peace on Earth

It's Christmas Eve. I am pretty much without words. As a Christian, this is my favorite season, the time of my greatest hope and belief in things good for mankind and beyond. I love the secular part of Christmas, too--the presents and the music and all things shiny. Even when I was a window clerk in the post office, December was, though a definite challenge, also a definite joy.

Challenge. Yes. This December has been that. The grief of the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy has held us all it its pall. I laughed with my family yesterday and hugged my grandchildren and felt some guilt because I could. A friend lost her father the other day. Another friend's mother passed away yesterday. Yet another is ending her marriage even though she didn't want to. Sadness, even in the laughter and the rejoicing among believers, is pervasive.

But Christmas music is playing in my office. I turned on the tree lights when I came in here this morning. There is snow on the ground and birds flitting around outside. My husband and the family that stayed over are asleep in the house.

The sign at the church across the road says, "On earth peace, good will toward men." There's more to that message, a line we've added in songs and in belief and in just getting from day to day. You know what it is, because you've probably said it to yourself 100 times. Let there be peace on earth...

...and let it begin with me.

Merry Christmas--or Happy Holidays depending on your belief system. Let it begin with you.