"Fall on your knees, O hear the angels' voices, O night divine, O night when Christ was born..." Today Christians celebrate a birth and life like no other.

Last month my wife and I crept down a flight of steps into a grotto under Bethlehem's 1,700-year-old Church of the Nativity, where Jesus was born. It was surreal and deeply moving.

For me science is essential — but incomplete. We stare out at the universe through a pinhole as God reveals himself to us, like peeling away the layers of an infinite onion. We don't know what we don't know. Science has no answers for why we're here — or what comes next.

A brush with snow is likely tonight into Saturday, maybe a quick inch. Another system sideswipes us with snow Tuesday into Wednesday, when a couple inches may pile up. This time it might stick around for awhile. By late next week highs hold in the teens, with single-digit lows. Still no subzero lows in the metro though, and long-range models suggest a thaw by the second week of January. It wasn't a white Christmas but I hope it was merry, spent with dear friends and family.