All is safe within the fold.

I watched (500) Days of Summer. I thought it was really excellent. Mostly because I loved Zooey Deschanel's clothes and because this movie portrays the collective unconscious most of us share about relationships. Summer and Tom's relationship personifies parts of every relationship I've ever been in.

You know, my French teacher Mr. Boorda (who taught me how to say a bad word in French just in case I ever went there and got called this word) told me that humans are 95 percent alike. I remember thinking what that meant about me as a high school freshman. It meant that even though the popular kids thought they were so much better than everyone else, they were still much more like the rest of us than they wanted to be.

Which means there's a 95 percent chance you will identify with my memories of Christmas.

Christmas is so anti-climatic to me. We have our big Christmas Eve dinner. We're having 20 people this year. We eat standing rib roast that my dad thinks is too expensive, but he won't switch to ham or turkey because rib roast is just so good. My mom gets out the china. We drink Martinelli's (I am excited to try the apple-pomegranate). We open a pair of pajamas Christmas Eve night and wear them as we open presents Christmas morning.

We have one nativity in our house. We have gilded gold deer and Santas and angels and garlands and a real Christmas tree that had the smell manufactured out of it.

And that's really it. Our traditions have degraded into the inessential, managing to be monotonous and nostalgic and stimulating all at the same time. It's just this dinner-that dinner, with no real defining moment or enduring impression. Each year I fight relative boredom, and the tendency to perpetuate a hollow, aimless celebration where the Savior is mentioned only in the prayer over dinner, if He's lucky.

This year more than any year, I feel this is a commentary on my own former surrender to distraction and failure to incorporate my spiritual convictions into my temporal world. This year will not be like the rest.

"Silent Night" has long been my favorite Christmas song. Few other hymns so accurately recount the sacredness of that hallowed night. Few other hymns so delicately convey the calming peace and quiet reassurance our Savior can bring us throughout our tumultuous mortal existence. I need Him. I love Him.

So here it is. My token Christmas blog entry.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.