The Mood of Christmas – Howard Thurman

For [the Christmas Season], we affirm our solidarity with the whole human race in its long struggle to come humane and to reveal divinity in which all [humankind] shares… Christmas is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making the crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of everyday, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil. — Howard Thurman (The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations, pp. xii, xiv)