Merry Christmas, Friends

And when we give each other
Christmas gifts in His name,
let us remember
that He has given us the sun
and the moon and the stars,
and the earth with its forests
and mountains and oceans -
and all that lives and moves upon them.
He has given us all that blossoms and bears fruit
- and all that we quarrel about
and all that we have misused -
and to save us from our own foolishness,
from all our sins,
He came down to earth
and gave us
Himself.

-Sigrid Undset, Christmas and Twelfth Night