The first snowfall of the season settles over the ground in the late November twilight. I stand at the window, dancing with the snowflakes and thinking about my mother, all those years ago pregnant with me, her due date passing as she, too, gazed out the window, wondering where my father was, if he still lived. World War II had ended, but danger continued to stalk the globe. Around her family’s store/home, winter promised to call, as it does today, and I, restless, waited until the third of December to venture into the storm.

It is impossible to escape the ubiquitous seasonal music, the barrage of advertisements urging us to spend, spend, spend, yet more important concerns intrude. At our borders, we witness the relentless assault on every value we pretend to espouse. Women and children are driven away from asylum, tear-gassed, vilified. In a season dedicated to peace, among people paying lip-service to a Savior, hate abounds.

History provides no solace, Through the ages, mankind has seen fit to use religion as a battering ram. Regardless of sect or creed, every doctrine has a story of destruction in its DNA. Tolerance dies when one group seeks to impose its beliefs on the ‘others.’ But somewhere, faint and far-off, a single voice whispers a silent night. Somewhere holiness takes root. One hand stretches toward another and we lift up our voices in chorus. The knights of harmony refuse to remain silent.

Will goodness and light ever triumph, or are we doomed to repeat again the deadly cycles? I believe it is only in remaining mute that evil wins. Each of us must walk a path of our own choosing. No one path serves all men and women, but there are signposts to guide us. Each great religion offers a roadmap, a way to be true to the best of our nature. You are free to select yours. I have made my choice — not to stand silent in the face of so much wrongness. That is the harness I will wear as 2018 fades to black and 2019 takes the stage. I will be an insolent knight, tilting those windmills and working for change. So, this holiday season — and it is a season as more than twenty-five individual holidays occur around the world during this six-week period, may you add your voice to those advocating reason and hope.

Although Dylan Thomas wrote his beautiful poem to his dying father, I often hear the refrain as a call to arms in every instance where reason and goodness are under attack. “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”

Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Happy Kwanzaa! Merry Holidays! May you walk in light, lift your voice in the service of what is right, and be the change you want to see in the world.