Here’s a Christmas poem which I sums up where I find the heart of this time of year – a value for the small, ordinary facts of physical life on earth.

Christmas
The alchemy of myth –
the stars and angels, the earth’s
return to light, green ivy,
the quickening sap in the tree’s
deep heart, the cattle
kneeling in frosty fields,
the robin’s song at midnight –
all refined to the bare particular
fact of a birth –
that night, that inn, that boy.

Not everyone is finding the facts of human life particularlt friendly just now. A lot of people are facing serious medical uncertainties, and everyone caught up in the accident in Glasgow yesterday will find it hard to throw themselves into the festivities, but I hope that everyone who reads this will find the holidays a time for peace, rest, and the comfort of family and friends.