It is nearly that time — nearly the day on which we celebrate a light brought into a dark world just as many have rejoiced that our darkest day of the year is now behind us.

Christians across the globe will spend Christmas Day gathering with family and friends to eat, sing, exchange gifts and love one another. Many of us have rushed to and fro for weeks, shopping for gifts, preparing holiday foods and making plans to celebrate together under sparkling lights and around our trees.

Millennia ago we were brought “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

A baby — lying asleep in a manger because there was no room for his family in the town where they needed shelter — was born to teach us all how to love.

Now 2,000 years later on Christmas Day, even if we don’t always get it quite right, we celebrate what that means for us. We show our love for one another with our gifts — toys, clothing, electronics, jewelry or, perhaps, food or charity to a stranger. They are pitiful imitations of what we’ve received, but they are gifts nonetheless.

And while we laugh and sing in comfort with one another, settling in to enjoy all the fruits of our labors leading up to this joyous day, many of us will be praying that the City of David does, indeed, remain silent on that night this year.

Regardless of whether there is snow on the ground, all of our favorite foods on the table or as many gifts as we would like to see beneath the tree, even for non-Christians, on Christmas Day there is light, love and joy. The Christmas spirit cannot be confined.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men,” the angels declared on that day.

May we carry that peace and good will through the new year. And may we — all — have a merry Christmas.

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“We are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder