‘Fear not.’

It’s Christmas Eve, babe, so here’s the Pogues & Kirsty MacColl with one of my favorite songs of the season:

And here’s my annual plug for Anne Lamott’s “Advent Adventure” …

So I called my Jesuit friend, Tom, who is a hopeless alcoholic of the worst sort, sober now for 22 years, someone who sometimes gets fat and wants to hang himself, so I trust him. I said, “Tell me a story about Advent. Tell me about people getting well.”

He thought for a while. Then he said, “OK.” …

Read the whole thing, because it’s Christmas.

Then, after all of that, after all the presents are exchanged and all the family gatherings have wound down, after everybody heads back home, come back here and read this again from Howard Thurman:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.