ABSTRACT
Christmas will soon be here with its wondrous messages and precious memories, and deep whispers about the realities of relationship. How all jars seem to sink to nothingness at its approach! How the real bond of family reasserts itself, dominant over fancy, attraction, yes, perhaps, in a measure over friendship itself, as though it would teach us how tremendous the bond of duty is! Certainly we have duties to our friends, too, but they seem to have more relation to what we feel instinctive longing to do, innate capacity for doing, to stand more by virtue of relations which we have chosen for ourselves than solely on the command of God.
