We are quickly entering December which can be a month of great joy, but for some it can be a time of sadness and depression.

Even the medical people can have some good counsel on THE REASON FOR THE SEASON:

J.C. Ryle wrote in 1878 the following:

Anything which helps to keep up family feeling ought to be commended. It is a wise thing, when it can be done, to gather together at Christmas “the whole family.”

Family gatherings, nevertheless, are often sorrowful things. It would be strange indeed, in such a world as this, if they were not. Few are the family circles which do not show gaps and vacant places as years pass away. Changes and deaths make sad havoc as time goes on. Thoughts will rise up within us, as we grow older, about faces and voices no longer with us, which no Christmas merriment can entirely keep down. When the younger members of the family have once begun to shift for themselves and launch forth into the world — the old heads may long survive the scattering of the nest. But after a certain time, it seldom happens that you see together “the whole family.”

And now, reader, let me take occasion from Christmas to tell you of a great family to which I want you to belong. It is a family despised by many, and not even known by some; but it is a family of far more importance than any family on earth. To belong to it entitles a man to far greater privileges than to be the son of a king. It is the family of which Paul speaks to the Ephesians, when he tells them of the “whole family in Heaven and earth.” It is the family of God.  See,   https://gracegems.org/Ryle/family_of_god.htm

The Family of God – Grace Gems! The Family of God. J.C. Ryle, 1878. “The whole family in Heaven and earth.” Ephesians 3:15