It’s Christmas — if not in date, certainly in season. We wanted to take the opportunity to say a few words this weekend before festivities really kick into high gear for most people.

We know that in the fervor of family dinners, gift wrapping — more importantly, unwrapping — and whatever your particular religious tradition, your friendly community newspaper is likely, and justifiably, forgotten.

Obviously, Christmas is significant to Christians, and despite cries about the alleged war on Christmas, Christmas has become much more.

Christmas is a warm kitchen filled with the smells of ham and cookies.

Christmas is the excitement of ripping through wrapping paper to find out how well your family and friends know you.

Christmas is the songs and voices of decades past wishing you well through the ages; and movies filled with stars long dead that you watched as kids and your parents watched as kids.

Ultimately, we would posit, Christmas is memory. It helps us — forces us, if necessary — to remember what is really important in our lives.

There is no other holiday which is as effective, on a cultural level, at being a mirror and reflecting what we, as a people, truly care about.

For many, Christ is a huge part of that, and we applaud those people.

But while many put their religion at the heart of Christmas, virtually everyone, regardless of their religion, enjoys the secular side of Christmas — the gifts and the decorations, the food and the family.

Of course, let it not be said that the holiday is without pain. Many have lost loved ones and mourn their absence dearly. Others grew up in tragic circumstances and never experienced the joy of Christmas the way most did. Some people will spend Christmas alone, or working, and have to live with the knowledge of what they are missing.

And, some incredibly unfortunate families in Wisconsin this year have gifts under their trees for children who never came home from school.

But those pains are also a mirror: in the same way as joy, they still reflect what is important to us — just in its absence.

For Christmas, we can focus on ourselves and our families and friends, and let the worries of the world fall away.

We can breathe.

And, in that breath, we can hope for many more Christmases such as this, many more moments with those we cherish, reveling in joy and companionship.

Joyous Christmas to you all.