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YORKTON - It is a somewhat rare occasion when this publication actually has the publishing dateline of December 25, a date with obvious significance for those following Christian faiths.

It is the sort of a convergence that when one sits to write the final editorial of the year it is hard not to focus attention on what the day means.

In that regard it’s not about how much tinsel is on the tree, how large the yard blowup of a T-rex eating a present is, or whether Die Hard is truly a Christmas movie, or where to put the ‘elf on a shelf’ for one final say this season – you know the sort of Christmas time stuff that might be fun but do not get to the heart of the season.

If you want to get to the greater truth of the season you really only need to look in the mirror and determine what’s inside the person who looks back.

The season – and here we can extend it past the Christian Christmas to a significant number of other days marked at this time of year by various religions – comes down to how we should care for one another, and for this mud-ball we call earth that we live on.

It was Bob Marley’s ghost in the classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens who said, ““mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”

We need to feel this inside when we look in a mirror.

And sadly, it seems increasingly that is being forgotten in this world.

Too often the ugly face of racism is being seen. The persecution of others simply for living their lives the way they are.

The colour of one’s skin, the country they trace their family roots too, who they choose to love, who they choose to pray too, are not reasons others should persecute them.

We need to accept the diversity and embrace it to build a better unified future and that starts with seeing the benevolence Marley’s ghost spoke of in a book written so long ago.

You might think we would have learned that by now.

Then again another oft heard sentiment of the season goes something like ‘peace on earth and goodwill to all men’ paraphrasing a Bible passage, and you only need to look to Ukraine and the Middle East today to know we are a long way from making those words a reality.

So maybe as we embark on the next few days of turkey leftovers, and present returns which don’t fit, we should all look inward and start the process of being better at caring for one another since ‘mankind’ in Dickens’ line mankind was my business comes without caveats.