Merry Christmas! Here are a few highlights of our Christmas celebration so far.

There is nothing like the happy news of a brand-new baby.

“Besides the cradle in which our Lord, it is alleged, was rocked, is the stone manger of the grotto of Bethlehem. One of the stones of this manger is shown in the basilica of St. Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, in the altar of the crypt of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

Whatever your Christmas looks like this year, I hope you find your way to the manger, and that you encounter moments of beauty, hope, and joy.

All along, Mary’s immaculate heart had always been fertile ground for God’s love to grow.

Christmas this year is arriving amid shock and tears. The images of devastation wrought by at least 22 tornadoes slashing their way through Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois are etched in our national consciousness.

We aren’t ready for Christmas, but Easter’s in the bag.

When grandchildren who have been living together for years without being married come to visit, do I put them in separate bedrooms? People laugh at me for this, but I have a real problem: Is living together no longer a sin? (Sorry — I can’t move on from my upbringing.) (City and state withheld)

When I mentioned that I was participating in two Yankee gift swaps this week, my family didn’t sound that enthusiastic.

If we already believe that God, having existed outside of space and time before eternity, created the universe, does actually seeing the big bang or the earliest galaxies make a difference?