I wonder as we approach this Christmas "holy day," if we have lost our ability as a society to look for, to wait for, to anticipate those magical moments in life. Can we actually experience the birth of a loved child, or a grandchild and not believe in something greater than what we can see, measure or understand?  Or can we really sit on a beach and watch the sun slowly sinking into the water and not wonder how we got so lucky to be part of this beautiful and unique planet.  Are all of the fairies under the damp leaves gone for our children, lost, never to be found because we haven't taken the time to look for them?  Are there no more hippopotamus in the suburbs or have we just stopped "seeing" them?

A vast segment of humanity has been telling itself this same story of a baby born in a manger in Bethlehem for many centuries now; peace and goodwill towards all the clan of Homo sapiens. But nothing has changed. Bethlehem itself has become synonymous with violence. Just now, as the Christmas fervor is being driven towards its annual climax, once-Christian nations are waging war against other countries.  What is the deeper story that has somehow been twisted wholly out of shape and so layered over with trite or fraudulent wrappings that the real gift is rarely ever envisioned let alone observed and gratefully received? Is there, was there ever, some precious thing of matchless beauty, power and grace at the very heart of Christmas- something with flaming potency to transform our lives, our world?

Exposing tardy Wise Men, superbabies and other seasonal inaccuracies.

Christmas. It's all about the good times: family and friends, candlelight services, stockings, mistletoe, rampant misinformation. Few holidays are more tangled up in folktales, urban legends and outright unbiblical ideas than the one celebrating our Savior's birth. Not that we talk about it all that much. Disputing the time-honored verses of Christmas carols or exposing the errors of the children's living nativity scene is a good way to get a Yule log to the head. It's practically Scroogetastic. Nevertheless, here are a few things you may not have known about your favorite Christian holiday.

Willa Cather's Christmas story, "The Burglar's Christmas," portrays a young man named William, who had moved away from his family back east and was now in Chicago. Impoverished, he breaks into a house on Christmas Eve to steal some food. He discovers that he has burglarized the house of his parents who had moved to Chicago. His mother catches him while stealing, and he confesses everything. In so many words she begs him to stay, "Tonight you have come back to me, just as you always did after you ran away to swim in the river that was forbidden you, the river you loved because it was forbidden...I never asked you where you had been then, nor will I now. You have come back to me, that's all in all to me."

He looks up at her questioningly and says, "I wonder if you know how much you pardon?" She responds, "O, my poor boy, much or little, what does it matter? Have you wandered so far and paid such a bitter price for knowledge and not yet learned that love has nothing to do with pardon or forgiveness, that it only loves, and loves-and loves?"