With all the family gatherings, the Christmas season is a great time for storytelling. It’s only natural to reminisce about Christmases past or just other childhood memories as we get together with distant relatives, who we may not see more than once a year. Storytelling  helps us remember who we are and from whence we came.

And then there’s the Christmas story itself. I never get tired of hearing it. Like one of my favorite hymns says, “… those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.” And hear it, we do. We hear it read from the Bible: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled…” We hear it sung out in song: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come…” We see it displayed in symbols like stars and stables, and we see it acted out in gestures of gratitude, of goodwill and of giving.

Sometimes I wonder where our culture would be without the celebration of Christmas. As with our personal stories, for those of us who are Christians, it is a way to remind ourselves who we are and from whence we came.

Now we’re only hours away from a new year. It will be full of new experiences and new stories. It always is. Let’s live this new year to the fullest, marveling in the light of each new day, and then let’s gather together again next December and tell the old, old stories, the ones we’ve “loved so long.”