Thanks to you all for allowing us to come into your homes each and every week, and we wish you a wonderful holiday season.

When I was younger, I wouldn't have felt mentioning the true meaning of the season, and the birth of Jesus Christ, as appropriate in a publication like this. Now I understand that gathering with your family around a warm fire with a cup of hot chocolate in their hands, and the images of Jesus' birth inscribed on their thoughts, the laughter and joy of being together with family and friends, is in fact infinitely more important than corn prices, or even a newly developed technology with the potential to accurately assess tenderness at change speeds.

My only regret is I don't have the writing skills to paint the picture of that glorious first Christmas that lives in almost all of our memories and hearts. Instead, I offer you my most sincere prayer that you might laugh with a close friend, hold a little one tight, and bask in the glow of a kid's smile as he or she opens their gifts; that you might sit down with your mom and dad, son or daughter and have a meaningful heart-to-heart discussion. That you might have the chance to stare into the flame of a candle and truly give praise for the birth of the Son of God and how His life, His words, and His sacrifice forever changed the world.

I hope this holiday you might have a chance to stare out a window and watch the snow flutter softly to the ground, holding your spouse's hand, and in silence feel the love you truly feel and so inadequately express.

May this be a Christmas that creates a memory that sustains you in less happier times. Merry Christmas.
-- Troy Marshall