Each year this Christmas letter gets harder to write.

That Christmas is a time for gift-giving, and that a gift subscription is a gift that keeps giving, is what every magazine editor starts whistling when the sweaters come out of mothballs.

Yes, THE SUN is a gift, a multi-faceted jewel, the real thing not glass — and gift subscriptions help sustain us, as THE SUN may help sustain that certain friend on your list.

But the essence of Christmas isn’t gift-giving; it’s Christ’s message. To me, the true spirit of Christmas is to bear the cross of days with love; to see love crucified yet know love doesn’t die; to read love’s message, scrawled across the heavens and written on every cell, and to learn it by heart.

Perhaps THE SUN reminds you of this. If so, here is the opportunity to give it as a gift.

And here is a Christmas prayer: that we cherish the great gift we’ve all been given. And at every opportunity, give it away.

— Sy