Merry Christmas, my friends. May this day bring you heartfelt worship and tender joys. On this day, I am pondering a lovely quote I found in one of De Witt Talmage’s sermons—a quote that calls us to not only be joyful at Christmas, but to see in Christmas proof that Christianity is a joyful faith. He means to counter the “delusion that the religion of Christ is dolorous and grief-infusing.” Here is how Christmas counters any such notion: The music that broke through the midnight heavens was not a dirge, but an anthem. It shook joy over the hills. It not only dropped upon the shepherds, but it sprang upward among the thrones. The robe of a Saviour’s righteousness is not black. The Christian life is not made up of weeping and cross-bearing and war-waging. Through the revelation of that Christmas night I find that religion is not a groan, but a song. In a world of sin, and sick beds, and sepulchres, we must have trouble; but in the darkest night the heavens part with angelic song. You may, like Paul, be shipwrecked, but I exhort you to be of good cheer, for you who are trusting on Christ shall all escape safe to the land.