Over time, I have come to suspect that the problem lies in the question itself. Christmas may not be asking us to say something new at all.
What has increasingly drawn my attention is the closeness of Christmas to the winter solstice. These are the shortest days of the year, when light feels fragile and provisional, when daylight barely establishes itself before beginning to fade again. There is something quietly mysterious about that, something that resists explanation and invites contemplation instead.
Yesterday morning an unexpected snowstorm rolled in. The sky darkened, and our Christmas lights, programmed to come on at dusk, lit up at 9:15 in the morning. Nature had fooled the technology. I found that oddly delightful, as though the season itself were reminding us who sets the terms.
Moments like that have led me to wonder whether Christmas is less about saying something new and more about learning how to be present to what is already here.
The philosopher Iris Murdoch suggested that the heart of the moral life is attentiveness. Not moral certainty, and not sheer force of will, but the disciplined practice of paying attention to reality as it is, without bending it to our wishes or fears. She even described attention as a form of love. That insight seems especially apt at Christmas.
To be attentive in late December is to notice the quality of the light, and also the experience of the darkness. These are the days when light is brief and easily lost, when the sun hangs low and shadows lengthen early. Darkness, in this very ordinary sense, is simply part of the season. Yet under these conditions even a small light becomes noticeable. Candlelight matters. A single window lit at dusk draws the eye. Christmas lights show themselves with a strange sense of comfort.
Attentiveness allows us to notice small acts of kindness that might otherwise pass by, and forms of beauty that do not announce themselves loudly. Candlelight rather than floodlight. A child rather than a hero. A stable rather than a palace.
This raises a further question. Attentive to what, exactly? To goodness, when it appears quietly and without fanfare; to love, when it takes the form of presence rather than solutions; and to beauty, when it shows up in ordinary places—snow on branches, light against darkness, a familiar carol heard once more.
Perhaps this is what Christmas invites us into each year—not novelty for its own sake, and not cleverness, but a way of seeing and a way of being, a slowing down, and a willingness to let the season shape us rather than rushing to explain it. If Christmas has a message for me this year, it may be this: that the most important things do not force themselves upon us. They wait. They require attention. And attention, as Iris Murdoch reminds us, is already a form of love. In that sense, Christmas does not need us to say something new. It asks us to notice what has been here all along.
Merry Christmas!
+Ab. Andy