Warmth in a cold world--3 days 'til Christmas

"Season of warmth amid the cold," 5 x 7 watercolor card

In Oklahoma, before you go outside in these brief days and long nights this time of year, you look at the temperature, the sky, trying to decide how much you need to wear to stay warm.
Not so in much of the Great Plains and north of here. "Bundle up" is unneeded advice.
It's a cold world out there, but not just this time of year, a time where warmth is welcome, light is life, home is hope.
Has it not always been so? Such is the appeal, the wish, the hope of Christmas, symbolizing the warmth, the life, the hope of a Messiah who came to help people bundle up against the cold world of cruelty and injustice.
A star--a sun, a source of light and life, of warmth is the symbol of his arrival and reminds us there is supposed to be warmth in our lives, "not as the world gives," to quote Jesus.
As Christmas has faded from religious remembrance to retail revelry, much of that warmth disappears, swept away in the cold north wind of greed, even when we need it more than ever.
Thus a star, thus warmth, in a cold world.