Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas! These are the traditional greetings to each other when December 25th comes around to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Christ. Our society is being bombarded by the world of commercialism and those who have other belief systems to downgrade this celebration by calling it simply a "holiday" time.

I could write 10 pages on my feelings about this, but will just ask you now to answer anyone who wishes you "Happy Holiday" by answering them, "Merry Christmas!" in no uncertain terms!

There would be no holiday of giving gifts without that birth and the gifts given to the little child. What are they thinking of? Find Christmas cards that reflect your deep understanding of that wondrous gift to humanity and throw out the "happy holiday" stuff. It's time to take a stand!

I picked up a novel by Dean Koontz that I couldn't really get into for obvious reasons, but did find a paragraph that was outstanding in the depth of his understanding of the human spirit. Why he hides such things in his books I don't know.

Here it is: "We are most alive and the closest to the meaning of our existence when we are most vulnerable, when experience has humbled us and has cured the arrogance which, like a form of deafness, prevents us from hearing the lessons that this world teaches."

This echoes the old adage that we have to hit bottom before we can look up again, and, unfortunately, that is true for many, many people today who are bound up in their addictions to wealth, alcohol, drugs, electronic games, and the need to control others in any way they can.

There is a point at which all of these fads to fuel the conscious mind will wear very thin, and the vacuum they have created will become frightening in their lack of reality and peace. The hundreds of electronic miracles that are being thrown at us in the marketplace now will have to be more and better every year to keep up the interest and the need for them, but eventually it will become clear how needless they really are.

Senseless, mind-numbing communication will pale beside the thrilling communication found in the silence of the mind when one listens to the music of the universe and the loving guidance that is always there for us. That is the real gift, blazing with Light, that the Christ Spirit taught us to understand.