Letter to The Editor - The bitterness and sorrow of human life is acknowledged

To The Australian         You are right ("Seeking comfort in the mystique of Christmas", 24/12) that "the season's theological underpinnings run far deeper than sentiment." Even deeper than theology is the metaphysical reality about which theologians discourse. However, your statement that "at its heart, Christmas is mysterious and bittersweet" is surely only half right. It is mysterious because it symbolises the penetration into our everyday world of a higher understanding, something that can come when one has been "born again" (as Jesus explained to Nicodemus). That revelation is fundamentally joyous. The celebration of Easter, of course, is a different matter. There is where the bitterness and sorrow of human life is acknowledged, but also its ultimate overcoming by that which in our deepest depths is eternal.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic