That’s why I’m writing this now. It’s September. If I wait until December, I succumb to the once-a-year tradition which keeps me from thinking Christmas every day.

I don’t want to be like the Lord of the Manor who hosts his working tenants and gives them the annual food and drink, one day to dance and mingle, and then the next day it’s back to work and business as usual.

I don’t want to be the Philanthropist who sets up tables in the public park, schedules the well-meaning like-minded to carve the turkey and place a portion on the empty plates of the homeless lined up and hungry, never mind the scraps they’ll hunt for the next day after sleeping wherever they sleep through the night.

We don’t learn the lesson repeatedly taught by those who see the better world, who tell us, convince us.

The Grinch’s small heart gets larger and stays larger.

Scrooge bought the goose and gave it away, extended the holiday, gave the next day off, transformed his past and became a changed man.

It’s a Wonderful Life.

If we can do it for one day, we can do it everyday.

Christmas celebrates a new beginning.

It’s a lesson in love.

Love is better than hate. When we allow ourselves to love, love is stronger than hate.

When we love our neighbor, we open our hearts, so when we love ourselves, our heart is not constricted by self-obsession, the greed of exploitive acquisition, of more than enough, the shallow easy satisfaction of mechanical tallying the bottom line.

The bottom line is not the last line. When we write prose into poetry, the last line opens and does not end.

Christmas teaches us this. But if we keep it to one day, we haven’t learned its lesson.

When we stay open to love, Christmas lasts all year, every year.

Increasingly, I know this. Life for me has not always been easy, but the discovery of joy has kept my heart open.

We are confronted by choices: To be or not to be, to love or not to love.

I choose love.

Join me.

I’ll say it first.

I love you all.