Hello, my friends, and Merry Christmas.

Recently, I ran into a student at BYU who was celebrating Christmas with one of those epic Christmas

sweaters. A huge, larger-than-life Santa blazoned across the front, and I said to her,

thanks for bringing a little festivity to campus as we get closer to Christmas. Her complaint was,

yeah, but it doesn't feel like Christmas yet because there's no snow.

I responded to her, well, as a Southern Californian, I think white Christmases are overrated, no offense.

And there are other ways that help me get into the spirit of the season more than a blanket of snow.

To me, the greatest sense of the Christmas season is its music. And last

year in our Christmas special, I subjected you to some French in a Spanish accent from me,

as we discussed, Contique de Noel, and those beautiful lyrics in the French that have been

translated into, Oh Holy Night. This year, I had an interesting experience preparing for the Christmas season.

My oldest daughter must have sensed that I was still the earlier Ebenezer Scrooge

instead of the later version of it and needed to help me get into the Christmas mood.

And so as an early Christmas present, she brought my wife and I

and her two younger sisters to the beautiful Abravenal Hall in downtown Salt Lake City so that we could

join in the Messiah sing-along. Many of you, I'm sure, have been part of that in the past,

and it's a glorious, a glorious thing. Handel's Messiah was originally written for Easter.

And in some ways,

it's so fitting for Easter because it's focused on the atonement, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it has become more of a Christmas anthem than an Easter anthem,

and that's okay too. If you look at our own hymn book, so many of the Christmas carols we sing

actually are looking

forward to Easter, even as they celebrate the birth of Jesus. But it struck me as I was doing my best

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