1)Background
As was said last week, the Christmas stories might not be true in all their details but they are True in the sense that they represent a very special intervention of God in the human condition, a revolution indeed because it revealed to us just how much God loves us, one that, as G.K. Chesterton said, turned the world upside down and, astonishingly, when viewed from that perspective the world made sense. The Christmas stories reveal to us that God loved Her human children so much that He took on human form so that he could show us how to live and how to die, even walking with us down to the valley of death itself. The stories today tell us that even from the beginning it was not easy to be the special light of the world. Jesus was under threat all his life. The threats would finally catch up with Him as they catch up with all of us. But from Christmas we learn that finally the darkness can never put out the light.

2. Story
Once upon there was a little girl who never liked any of her Christmas, not her Barbie dolls, nor her crayola sets, nor her Paddington Bears, nor her doll houses, nor her nice dresses, nor her watches, nor her jewelry. She never complained about the gifts and she always thanked her family very politely. But she never seemed to enjoy either her gifts or Christmas. Rather she was usually glum and miserable during the holiday season. Some members of the family thought that maybe she needed counseling. But she was a perfectly normal and happy child at all other times of the years. Only at Christmas did something seem to go wrong with her personality. However, one year when she was a teenager and going to a holiday dance at her high school, the car in which she and her friends were riding skidded on a slippery street and crashed into a stoplight. The other kids were not banged up too badly. But she almost died. When she came home for Christmas day and opened her presents she burst into tears of joy. "I never used to like Christmas," she said. "Because I knew I was going to die some day and then there wouldn't be any more Christmases. Now I know that every day is Christmas, even the day after the day I die."