We come, or go, home - even though as many of us age with the ever circling years, our children no longer come to us but we go to them. Home transforms into the place where they are, a refuge from evil and the material.
And are we not guided there by a metaphorical star - a star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright? That star leads back to the permanent, the good, the pure, the supposition of how things are in a perfect world and how they ought to be in ours: giving, constancy, warmth, love. That is what we come home to, or should; that is the essence of Christmas we want the young to carry into their adulthood.
Is it not?
The year brings - what? Haste. Anxiety. Weariness. Grief. We drift from our moorings. We know worry, indecision, emptiness, fatigue, distress. And then we reach the year's most cherished evening, often a midnight clear. In many somewheres, parents read breathless children "A Christmas Carol" or "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" or "St. Luke" - about three men following not today's familiar glitter and grab, but a star.
A hush falls. In a deep and dreamless sleep - on a silent night, a holy night - the silent stars go by. And then - born this happy morning, yea, Lord, we greet thee - the promise of eternity in another child, this one embodying precisely the purity for which all children yearn, as well as those older with wearied hearts.
It's magical, miraculous stuff. Even now, as then, it motivates a world.