My most vivid memories of Chicago as a child are of the bitter cold and snowy winters. My mother used to say, "Nina only has to look outside for her eyes to tear up." I remember snow sweeping along the street as I waited for the Jeffrey bus to take me from 95th to around 101st, for my piano lessons with Mrs. Cleveland, at her home. I remember snowdrifts taller than I was. (Is that just a child's exaggerated imagination at play or was it really piled that high?)

We moved to New England where there was plenty of snow but much less wind and the cold was not so bitter. Still, except for making angels in the snow, I found little pleasure in winter. Then, in my thirties, I worked at a ski area where I learned how to ski downhill in a mediocre but exhilarating sort of way. Finally I could see some good in the snow and the cold. Living in New Hampshire in my 40s, I came to see the beauty in snow on small town streets, lit by bright winter sunlight, and in ice flows frozen on mountainsides. Snow and cold became a gift of nature, marred only by the struggle with shoveling driveways and negotiating icy streets.

We enter the darkening time of winter as light draws in, joining trees and other plants in winter rest. Greta Crosby wrote, "Let us not wish away the winter. It is a season to itself, not simply the way to spring ... let us praise winter, rich in beauty, challenge, and pregnant negativities." Sometimes in dark of winter it is hard to be aware of its potential. Its challenges, its icy dangers, its lack of warming sunlight, can bring us down. We might tend to isolation, to loneliness even. And if it is hard for some of us to live with winter's harshness, think of how hard it is for some others, perhaps more lonely than us, perhaps blessed with fewer resources.

We need the holy days of December, and we are fortunate that we can turn to any and all of them for light in the darkness. My family honored none of them&emdash;we had neither Christmas nor Chanukah nor any other festival which promised light and hope's return.

Over the years I have come to embrace the truth of the solstice. On December 21, I know that light is returning, the days will lengthen, the sun will warm. Giving Christmas to my daughter every year, and then sharing it with congregations, I came to see the beauty of new birth, the hope that new life brings. I remember that Jesus came into life and became a bearer of the truth of love and reconciliation among all peoples. Any child may bring a redeeming message for us. I learned to honor the miracles of Chanukah, that courage may triumph and a strong faith may prevail. I came to respect and cherish the principles of Kwanzaa, whose messages of self-determination and unity, among others, underline our own UU principles of individual uniqueness joined in an interdependent web of life.

In these darkening times, as we celebrate our many paths to hopeful truth, may we find the joy of generosity and the gift of enlarged spirits. May we allow love in and give it to the world.

With love and in gratitude,

Nina