 Welcome to this edition of Vantage Point. We are the Connecticut Conference staff and this day we want to bring you greetings for this holy season of Advent and Christmas and wish you a happy New Year for you and your loved ones and your community of faith. Joy to the world! I'm Karen Zeal, minister of faith formation and leadership for the Connecticut Conference and the steward of the Ruth Dudley Resource Center. I'd like to share with you this reading from Jan Richardson's Night Visions, Reflections for Advent and Christmas. Oh my soul, this is your work. To light the candles, set the tables, prepare the room and lay the feast, pour the wine and welcome the guests. In this blessed season I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. What's wrong Drew? It's the holidays. They're too busy. My to-do list is like impossibly big. But Christmas is a time of joy. Look at all these beautiful decorations. You should be happy. Nothing can make me happy right now. Merry Christmas to all. Feliz Navidad a todos. Felizidades. My Christmas wish for you in the world this year is peace on earth, not the peace of empire obtained at the point of the spear, but the peace of Christ, the shalom of God obtained through justice and love. Merry Christmas. I'm Mary Nelson, the regional minister for the South Central Region of the Connecticut Conference and I want to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. God bless. Christmas. It is a great story we celebrate. People seeking shelter refused. A baby born under rumor, suspicion and threat. Mary's baby, Joseph's baby. Only the wise men understand the promise that is being delivered. Someone to lead us and be our savior. This Christmas let us all look for Christ in the most unexpected places. Have a blessed, hopeful and justice filled Christmas. Peace. Best wishes for a wonderful Christmas and the best New Year ever from the churches of the Southwest Region of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Handel H. Brown, a Presbyterian pastor in the 60s who wrote a plethora of books about Christmas, states, to prepare our hearts for Christmas. We must cultivate the spirit of expectancy. I wish you the spirit of expectancy this advent and Christmas season and I hope you will carry that spirit into the new year. Merry Christmas. I'm Michelle Mudrick, your legislative advocate for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Whatever makes you happiest, I wish you lots of it this holiday season and in the new year. We care about the most vulnerable and there's a lot of issues to work on. Mass incarceration, gun control, poverty, economic, racial and environmental justice, anti-gambling, human rights and many more. So whether you are a lay or clergy leader, please reach out to me in 2016. I love to meet you and talk about how we can work together. I look forward to that. Thank you for your support of the Connecticut Conference and may God bless you and yours this holiday season and always. Merry Christmas. I know what will make you happy. Cookies. Carbs are going to make me fat. Oh. The Christmas story is familiar to most of us and it's harder to see the ways in which it is surprising. Not just for those who first experienced it 2000 years ago, but the way it still has the capacity to surprise us today. It's surprising not that a savior was born, but that the savior is born where he was. Not in the big city, not in the Royal Palace, but in a stable in a small town. It's not surprising that when a monarch is born that Magi would come to celebrate his birth, but notice they go to the wrong place too. And it's only when they find the right place that they know to celebrate. What I invite you to do this Christmas is to once again rediscover the surprise. Let Jesus surprise you this holiday and let that be a blessing for you this day and every day of the new year. Merry Christmas. During this season of Advent, God has given us a promise that into the mist of a time that is sometimes filled with despair, even violence, God promises to break in with hope, with love. And not as a conquering king that rides on a horse and demands that all would bow down, but instead as a vulnerable child, a newborn babe. It is an invitation for each of us to respond to all that we see with love and kindness. May this year's Advent and Christmas provide for you an opportunity to fill the world with God's love. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Hi, I'm Sue Willis, Program Associate in Connecticut Conference Registrar, wishing you a magical Christmas full of everything that you love and a new year filled with love and laughter. Merry Christmas. Drew, I brought you something. It's wrapped in paper and it's probably heavily packaged. It'll just add to our climate problems. Come with me. Where are we going? To hear something joyful. But... Greetings. I'm Tom Clough, the Eastern Regional Minister for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. And I just want to say Merry Christmas or as we say in the quiet corner. I feel so much better. Of course. There is nothing better than hearing the good news on Christmas Eve. Hey, let's go make some cookies. Wait, don't you want to greet everyone? Oh, wow. They're all out there. Yeah. Look, there's Jocelyn in Woodstock. And Eric in Norfolk. Yeah. And there's Liz in Glastonbury. And Jack Davinson. He's playing his guitar in Ridgefield. It's redding. In redding, right. Well, wherever you all are, we wish you a very Merry Christmas. And a sparkling new year. Season's greetings. The Prophet says the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. May that light warm your homes and hearts this season that you may bring joy to the world. Merry Christmas. For behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will come to all the people. This holy season of Christmas, we are reminded of the great and amazing and good news that has come to us that God has chosen to enter this world and enter it through a child. This season Advent reminds us, as we have lit the candles of hope and peace and joy and love, that God's abiding love for the world is a love that we are called upon as people of faith to mirror to this world. This has been a challenging time in our nation and in our world these days. And yet we are not a people who live without hope. Hope in the resurrection. Hope as people of faith that God will not let us go. God loves us with a love that will not let us go. And so in this season of Christmas, we as the staff of the Connecticut Conference want to wish you and your loved ones a blessed and merry Christmas and hope for the New Year. May God's spirit be with you and yours these days. God bless you. Merry Christmas. We wish you a merry Christmas. We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Good tidings we bring to you and your kin. Good tidings for Christmas and a happy New Year.