and then there was a star

The light piercing the darkness.

We have this total fascination with light. It's like, as darkness precedes it - nothing happens until there is light.

In my residential area, after a silent and tense power interruption, you can just hear the combined screams of relief and the released laughter when the lights would turn on at each of the houses.

Illumination, though how practical and functional it was intended to be, is even taken to the realm of the romantic and the dreamy. For who would pass off a chance to dine and watch the face of another by candlelight?

And that is why Christmas is such a great season. It's the chance to deck the rooms and even the front yard with those tiny lights. I don't know why, but those rows and rows of clear gold little beams really fascinate me. My green Christmas tree is adorned by eight hundred pieces of those sweet small pins glowing in the dim corner with all the tinsel and the red flowers.

The firecrackers have been ordered for December 31. To signal the end of the holidays and the start of the new year, there is almost a quasi-vow to welcome each year with the fantastic display of fire works in the midnight skies.

Yet all these are just a salute to that event that happened more than two thousand years ago. When a people were waiting for a Savior.. and when His coming was announced by a star. I believe that people know the meaning of all the ruckus that happens at Christmas time. That no matter how the righteous would condemn the commercialization and objectification of the Nativity - people really know that as one takes the effort in hanging that lantern, or untangling those strings of lights, he is making his statement for that star which shone for the Child King.

It started at the beginning. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good..