By way of confession, I dislike the Christmas season.

Since beginning my professional employment, the Christmas season is a stressful time of year filled with seemingly unending activities to squeeze out every last cent of available revenue, penny pinching to meet cost saving targets, capital project closures and invoice reconciliation for end-of-year spend.

By the time Christmas comes, I am frazzled, spent and ready for a long winter’s nap.

Thankfully, today is my last day of work for the year and I will be able to start focusing on the real reason for the season.

This morning, when I arrived in the office at 5:00 a.m., before starting any work, I took a minute to read the December 2002 First Presidency Message written by President Hinckley. As I read the closing sentence of that article, “God be thanked for the gift of His Son…,” I felt a spirit of peace wash over me.

Suddenly, the stack of year-end work on my desk didn’t seem so daunting and I began to feel the holiday spirit that I have so desperately tried to feel.

With my spirit lifted and renewed, I can now look forward to joining my wife and children in Iowa to celebrate Christmas with her parents and brother’s family.

Most importantly, I look forward to attending church this Sunday and worshipping the Most High God and celebrating the gift of His Son.

Like President Hinckley, I also have a testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer.

And so at this Christmas season, we sing His praises and speak our words of faith and gratitude and love. It is His influence in our lives that stirs within us more kindness, more respect, more love, more concern. It is because of Him and His teachings that we reach out to those in trouble, distress, and need wherever they may be.

It is proper during this season when we commemorate His birth that we remember the Lord Jesus Christ in reverence and with love. He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. He has brought meaning to our mortal existence. He has given us the gift of eternal life. He was and is the Son of God, who was “made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

God be thanked for the gift of His Son, the Redeemer of the world, the Savior of mankind, the Prince of Life and Peace, the Holy One.

Gordon B. Hinckley, “A Testimony of the Son of God,” Ensign, Dec 2002, 2–5