Christmas Eve is here. May you be granted that which cannot be bought: a morsel, a helping, of stillness.

We rush with such speed to Christmas that, when the day itself comes, we are still being propelled by the season's crazed momentum, weary runners unable to stop at the finish line. Boxing Day will arrive with that same, hollow feeling: is that all? Where did it all go?

What has Christmas become in a secular age? What are we doing, tangled in all this ribbon and nostalgia, a creedless horde waiting in line for Wii? No one can know this, but you.

I hope you have an answer.

Many smart people do not believe in God, or His Son, or a shred of the Christmas story. Judge us not, who do.

Think, though, of this. The world is crazy. There are wars and murders and earthquakes, children who die of cancer, seniors slain as they deliver Christmas cards. This is the world we live in. All of us are born to suffer its turns.

But there is a choice. You can view life's working conditions with resigned acceptance. Or you can face them with the help of faith and the hope of redemption.

This, surely, is the most overpowering aspect of the Christmas story. God gave his only Son to help rid the world of sin, to offer redemption to you and me, because we need it, because we can't get up this morning and go on, at peace, without knowing it is out there.

An understanding of death and redemption only comes with age.

On Dec. 15, 1989, my little brother died in a Victoria hospital at the age of 25. With my older brother, I was at his bedside when he drew his last breath, this thin, helpless figure gone grey. So Christmas, and it is true for so, so many, always arrives with its melancholic moments. Around your tree or your table tomorrow, some loved one will be absent.

When we cleaned out his little apartment, it was amazing how few possessions he had. Some clothing. A few books. A wonky vacuum. Most of what he owned in this world we carried out in a green garbage bag, only half full.

At his funeral, hastily arranged, the church was virtually empty, save for family. We didn't know the old priest from Adam. In God's house, desolation.

He had lived in B.C. for most of seven years. How could this be possible? It was hard, as a brother, not to feel an utter sense of failure. It was over. It was unfixable. It would always be so. And, in as much as his death was painful, it was his life that made for the greater sorrow.

Well, that was a long time ago. Time does heal. It is true. And he would not want this somber dwelling in his name.

Strangely, there was something edifying about his passing. It steeled me against this crazy life. It is oddly liberating to wake up any morning with the knowledge that nothing, absolutely nothing, that happens today will hurt that much, will cut that deep.

So, in preceding me in death, he becomes, forever, my shield. He affords me, to borrow a phrase, a lightness of being.

This is, possibly, the essence of the Christmas message. Someone dies and makes you better. God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, for us, that we might be better. And if we fail, and we so often do, there is hope for us yet. How could you not believe? How could you not want it to be so?

And tomorrow we celebrate His coming, the beginning of redemption. That is what Christmas means to me and why all the other trappings so befuddle me. My son asked the other day why people started putting up Christmas trees. Unable to conjure an answer, I, naturally, blamed the Scandinavians.

So many other aspects -- eggnog, tinsel, lights up the ying-yang, Santa Claus down the chimney -- strike the same way. How did we let it grow so unwieldy? Heaven knows.

Probably, it matters not. This does. May you have a moment today or this week to ponder what it all means to you: a silent night, a candlelit moment, a helping of stillness, to reaffirm, to clarify, to know what you believe.