Light is mentioned almost twenty times in the course of today's liturgy. On one of the darkest days of the year, light explodes all around us. The sun is sneaking back, just as Jesus kind of sneaked into the world in the quiet of Bethlehem. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, Christmas is a midwinter feast, a time when the days grow a little longer and light and warmth return slowly. For those who live in the Southern Hemisphere, however, it is the beginning of summer.
School is over.
It marks not the shortest day of the year but the longest, the day of the most light and on the average the most warmth. Christmas fits in everywhere. C heck out A ndrew M. G reeley's Columns for the Chicago SunTimes' Daily Southtown . Once upon a time there were two kids who were fed up with Christmas. They began an anti-Christmas campaign among their friends.