Dear Reader:

By now many of you have already heard the “good news”…The Christmas Star is destined to light up the December sky for the first time in 800 YEARS!!!!

On Dec. 21, humans can witness something not seen in nearly 800 years.

That’s right, during the upcoming winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will line up to create what is known as the “Christmas Star” or “Star of Bethlehem.”

These two planets haven’t appeared this (relatively) close together from Earth’s vantage point since the Middle Ages.

“Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to be to one another,” Patrick Hartigan, astronomer at Rice University announced… “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.”

How exciting is this? I remember after the terrible destruction of Hurricane Hugo… we got the first white Christmas in the low country…a gift unparalleled for southern children…and let’s face it…adults too. It was like something out of a Christmas movie. It started snowing on December 23, 1989…Walsh’s birthday. What a memorable birthday!

…And now this time a brilliant rare sighting of the “Star of Bethlehem” is going to bring joy to so much of the world on December 21…not seen since 1226…and it, too follows, a natural disaster…actually pretty much a disastrous year… for so many- a pandemic…Covid 19.

It is as if God is giving His children a most wondrous Christmas gift this most challenging year to reassure us…that “All is still right with the world“…and we will get back there again.

I live by the impossible… How dull the world would be if we limited ourselves to the possible. Madeleine L’Engle

How revealing that quotation by L’Engle is…Christmas must be lived by the impossible made possible by our Creator. Think about if Joseph and Mary had lived only by the “possible” restrictions of social norms and earthly limitations ….neither one would have been able to accept the birth of Jesus as the Son of God.

The shepherds would not have been able to accept the possibility of angels revealing the future king to them in open fields on a normal evening like any other.

The wise men would have thought that the star they saw on the night of Jesus’s birth was possibly a planet never seen before or some other celestial object but certainly not a sign of a foregone prophesied king…a ruler who would change the world.

Christmas is a time when the our rational thought must turn to irrationality…faith at its most trusting. Perhaps this short piece of prose by Madeleine L’Engle is my Christmas favorite.

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d had been no room for the child.

So until tomorrow …Christianity is all about impossibilities made possible by God… and Christmas is the apex of what can happen when we have trust and faith in our Creator and what He will do for us….out of love. Christmas is pure, untainted love at its best…a peek into what love is all about…an insight into a love beyond our limited comprehension.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

***It is this love that will be our guiding light into the next world….I love this original Christmas card by Joan she sent one year…her little dogs watching the Christmas Star…sadly she, too, has lost a couple of these precious pets recently…like our beloved Tigger. But we must remember like us, they, too, are made of Star Dust and as such can be found again through the rainbow of love.

Think about this momentous type of love as we all watch the Christmas Star in a few weeks!

Ho Ho Ho!!! Luke came driving up in his magic “sleigh” truck with the most beautiful Frasier Fir…it is just perfect. Everything went like clockwork…all the lights worked ( a Christmas miracle) and Ruthie fit just perfectly on the “tip tip top” of the Christmas Tree. Her favorite time of the year…decorating can’t be far behind! 🙂