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I love Thanksgiving. It’s the one holiday the retail economy has not been able to capture. There is something authentic about a holiday that doesn’t require us to buy anything, but just invites us to gather our loved ones around a dinner table and be grateful. I am thankful for the annual opportunity to take stock and give expression to my gratitude. One of the things for which I am most grateful is this journal, for the team that creates it throughout the year, and for their commitment to making it a lively, faithful, provocative, stimulating magazine.

Here we are in the midst of December—surrounded by Santa, elves and frenzied children. Due to the intense focus on children at this time of year, the season is often a very painful one for people who are experiencing infertility or who have suffered a miscarriage. I recall that when my husband I were struggling to start a family, I once threatened to create a bonfire if I received one more “here are my perfect children” photo.

We live between Christ’s first and second advent, in what W. H. Auden called “for the time being,” which can be “the hardest time of all.” Everything has been changed by Christ’s coming, and yet to most people’s eyes, and often to Christian eyes as well, everything seems to remain the same. In Christ, the redemption of the world is under way, yet that redemption remains in large part hidden, still awaiting the final consummation.