Christmas

The creche, and the real-life re-enactments of the Nativity story, still popular in Catholic schools, have helped imaginations enter the Christmas story for centuries.

“If Christmas ends up as just a beautiful traditional holiday,” where everything revolves around “us and not him, it will be a lost opportunity,” the pope said Dec. 19 during his weekly general audience in the Paul VI audience hall.

Exactly 200 years ago this Christmas Eve — Dec. 24, 1818 — in a little church in what is now Austria, the world heard for the first time a poem set to music that eventually would be hailed as one of the most popular and beloved Christmas carols of all time.

In a season full of wonky Washington cocktail parties, the Franciscans aim instead for a more modest and spiritually meaningful way to mark the birth of Jesus.

If our homes can be places of warm welcome, so can our parishes.

There is no shortage of Christmas novels published every fall. One of this season’s best is Camron Wright’s “Christmas by Accident,” a clever, sweet holiday story featuring a young woman who loves Christmas and a gentleman who strongly dislikes the holidays.

Advent and Christmas are seasons of hope.

The world into which Jesus was born was rife with many of the same problems our world faces today. Yet, the readings for the Epiphany of the Lord help us understand that because of Jesus’ birth, there is more light than darkness, more hope than despair.