It’s that time of year in the Faber household where the calendar turned over to November and Mrs. Faber and the three girls decided that it’s time for Christmas.

I have two rules for life: One is that I never ask a lady if she is pregnant, and the other is that if something in the house provides my wife joy, I’m not going to stand in her way. Mrs. Faber and her cadre of three female mini hers have decided there isn’t enough time to celebrate Christmas post-Thanksgiving, and that it should start in November.

Referring back to rule number two, I told her that yes, I could drag the tree back down from the attic and start our assembly of creating the Christmas tree on a 60-degree day. I have always been team “fake Christmas tree” and it's a choice that is mostly economic, as I found out that you can buy a $800 Christmas tree from Costco in January for $250, much like most of my candy shopping on Feb. 15. So with Christmas carols ringing through the house, we assembled and decorated our 10-year-old, fully depreciated Christmas tree.

We have a tradition of buying an ornament every year that represents our year. It’s fun to see our story as we hang ornaments with each of the children's faces, the year we started dating, farm ornaments and a firefighter dog from the year I was a volunteer firefighter.

Christmas is a great time for reflection for all of us. As a recovering Scrooge, I appreciate that we get to celebrate Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful, with Christmas, a time to provide hope and encouragement. If you are less inclined to be religious, feel free to fast-forward through this part. The greatest gift ever given to this world was the birth of Jesus Christ, and while this celebration has turned into a worldly celebration replete with greed and gifts, at its core it is pure, humble and life-giving.

It has been a tough year, and yet when you have the knowledge that in the end our eternity is written by the hand that created and formed the entire world, we have the ability to fight every day. When we look in ourselves, we see we are deeply flawed, we know we should be doing things that we aren’t doing, we know we have a part of us that is not good enough and we should be better. We have moments where we feel like we have failed ourselves, the people around us and even for the unbeliever we know that we fail in the moral fabric we have constructed as society. Yet, there is an answer; there is hope. It is not found in soothing ourselves with substances, success, other people or happiness. Even happiness is fleeting and doesn’t provide fulfillment, as that can ebb and flow based on how fast someone is driving in front of us on the freeway when we are late for a meeting.

I think often of the words from C.S. Lewis: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” When we feel angst, uncertainty, unhappiness, even in times when we shouldn’t, it is coming from a part of your soul that is longing for something deeper and more. The next financial marker, the next relationship, the next promotion is not something that hits the part of our core being that is unsatisfied with this life. We are all on a rock traveling at 490,000 miles per hour through a space that we have not seen the end of. You will die, like the 117 billion other humans who have lived on this rock before you. You are a speck in time, that no matter what your accomplishment, will be forgotten in two generations. At best, your name may be emblazoned on a local hospital or written in a history book, and yet you will be forgotten in two generations. People in the future will not know your wry smile, appreciate your sense of humor and know how cunning you were in life or business.

For me, the only thing that gives me hope, encouragement, satisfaction and the ability to face each daily struggle is that my name is written in the book of life from the one who created this entire universe. It is my belief that one day when my time on this mortal coil ends, I will be greeted with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” This is not because I have been perfect, not without flaw, not without erring, but because I have been gifted everything in a baby born in Bethlehem.

If you find yourself still not completely happy, even with achieving the pinnacles of worldly success, or unhappy in the pits of despair, know that you can still win for eternity with a belief in the one who placed the stars in their place and controls every part of this life. Your name can resonate through eternity, where moth and rust will not destroy, a legacy where you can be a part of the chorus of people who call Jesus Christ, Lord.

Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas. It’s time for me to not break my neck as I find the one lightbulb out in the string I’m hanging from a non-OSHA-approved ladder around the house.