The Grinch asks the question; Dickens has the answer.

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
—Dr. Seuss

But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.
—Charles Dickens

It would be a nice resolution for 2007, clear through next Christmas, to open our “shut-up hearts” and minds and think of others’ wants and needs and beliefs, humble in the knowledge that their wants, needs, and beliefs are as important to them as ours are to us.

Happy New Year from the Harvard Press.