I just celebrated my 26th Christmas with my lovely bride. Each Christmas has been special and each one has been a little different.

Following half a century of hostility, and guided by the intervention of Pope Francis, the United States and Cuba have agreed to try to become good neighbours. The detente announced between the two nations on Dec. 17 is welcomed news to end a year that witnessed too much hatred.

Few Christmas hymns are more admired than “Silent Night.” The lyrics were penned by a young German priest in 1816 and a schoolteacher added the melody two years later. Together these amateur musicians wrote a simple yet powerful song that lovingly depicts the peace and joy of the holy mother and her new child.

Upon the death of Jean Beliveau I devoted my National Post column to eulogizing the gentleman who exemplified the best that Quebec once produced, a model of what Quebec aspires to be. The treatment was even more generous here in the pages of The Register, with a cover story and a laudatory editorial. It was well deserved.

A colleague scolded me recently for my argument that any attempt to reconfigure the culture must avoid being a pretext for smuggling Christendom back into the story.

They came by the thousands. Young and old, men and women, Francophone and English, the able-bodied and the infirm, they came despite the driving, biting snow and blustery wind to a church in Montreal in mid-December to bid farewell to hockey legend Jean Beliveau.

Several years ago Jean Beliveau was asked to name the book he would select if he could own just one.

“The Bible,” he told the Montreal Gazette. “It’s a book I could read the rest of my life.”

Fifty years ago Blessed Paul VI went to Jerusalem — the first papal trip outside Italy in our time, inaugurating the practice of apostolic journeys — to meet Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, primus inter pares of all the Orthodox patriarchs. It was a historic moment that, after nearly a millennia of separation, the Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter and universal pastor of the Church, would meet with the Patriarch of Constantinople, the “New Rome,” successor of St. Andrew and ecumenical patriarch of all Orthodoxy.

The other day a real-life discussion between pals reminded me of Unbroken, a movie opening on Christmas Day and based on the best-selling book and true story of a courageous American airman during the Second World War.

The world’s newest nation is in big trouble.

Following more than 20 years of civil war between north and south Sudan, the independent nation of the Republic of South Sudan was born in 2011.

But the birth of the new nation didn't come without pain. The many years of war brought not only much death, but also drained South Sudan of valuable resources, leaving it extremely poor.