. . . Our materialistic culture has absorbed and transformed just about everything spiritual that we should associate with Christmas. I wrote a few weeks ago in "At the Twilight's Last Gleaming" that religion has been slowly stripped from the public square in our culture, and too often what remains is the intolerance of extremism used by the media to paint religion as destructive. We have a daunting challenge if future generations are to believe in anything worthy of belief, and that challenge is met within our own hearts and souls. We cannot bring into our culture that which we do not yet have in ourselves. In no time is this more true than in Advent, now reduced to the commercial selling of a "holiday spirit" that requires little more depth than an annual unprecedented spending spree. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way to the cash register, and the Season of Giving and Taking is fulfilled. . . .