So this is Christmas...

YES, that most extraordinary time of the year has arrived once again.

Twelve months on from Yuletide 2015 when a word like 'Brexit' wasn't in the lexicon and the mere thought of 'President Elect Trump' was simply too ridiculous to imagine, that's where we're at as 2016 enters its final few weeks.

Personally, I've never known a year quite like 2016.

I think it was someone on Twitter who said that things all started to go awry when the great David Bowie shuffled off his mortal coil before the New Year was barely a fortnight old.

Bowie, according to the Tweeter, was the glue that held the universe together. And since he wasn't around any more, well...

Now I'm not going to put everything down to the very sad passing of that remarkable musician, but that claim is tough to argue against.

And if you throw in the departures of such people as Prince, Muhammad Ali and Leonard Cohen to name just a legendary trio, it's been one hell of a 12 months witnessing the great and the good pass away.

Back in the summer, a week before the European Union Referendum, I wrote about how there was a war raging between Love and Hate: http://snowypadres.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/two-four-letter-words.html

Six months later, that conflict is still going on - and in many ways has really intensified in the period since I penned that blog.

Britain - or should I say, certain parts of Britain - voted, just, to leave the European Union while over in the United States, despite not winning the 'popular vote' by quite a fair number, the dreadful Donald Trump is set to become the 45th American President early in 2017.

Meanwhile, real war is still raging in Syria with a peace settlement to a conflict that has being going on for more years than the Second World War still a distant dream.

The rise of the extreme right-wing is absolutely upon us and our nearest European neighbour, France, may be a matter of months away from electing a fascist president in the shape of Marine Le Pen - truly unbelievable for a nation that fought and died battling such an odious regime in the 1940s.

For anyone who knows me, December has always been my most favourite month of the year.

I absolutely love all that goes with it - the overall chaos, the parties, the family get-togethers, the food, the drink, the presents, the music, the films, the television, the sport. Everything.

I also love hearing again at Mass at Christmas that special story of the very first Christmas, now more than 2,000 years old.

The tale is only told in two of the Gospels - Matthew and Luke. And both accounts were penned for different audiences.

In St Matthew's version, the focus is on the visit of the wise men from the East while St Luke homes in on the message of the angels to the poorest of all of Palestine's workers, the shepherds in the fields.

And it's Luke's Gospel that has been a constant with me over the years.

As wonderfully astute as the wise men undoubtedly were and as great a carol as We Three Kings really is, the first line in The First Nowell is just so incredibly powerful:

"The first Nowell the angels did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay."

In other words, the Son of God's priority was for the poorest of them all.

And it makes you wonder what He would think of our world right now nearly 2,017 years after He was living among the people in Roman-occupied Galilee and Judea.

There just seems to be hatred and heartlessness everywhere you turn, with the poorest and weakest amongst us suffering most of all. And as things stand, it's difficult to see things getting any better.

When the first chimes of the New Year ring in, universally we always hope for a better 12 months ahead than the one we've just experienced.

In lots of ways, that will be the case more than ever come the opening seconds of January 1, 2017.

Yes, I'd truly love to think 2017 actually will be a better one than the one that's gone before it, but the way things are I have serious doubts.

All I'm hoping for right now as I write this at the start of the final month of 2016 is that you all have a happy and peaceful end to the year and that Christmas is one to remember for all the good reasons that this great and wondrous season can bring to you and your families.

And when the calendar does flip over into 2017, we must all stand together, united against hatred and division and bitterness - and confront it whenever and wherever we see it.

I'd like to think we've come a long way since we lived in caves and went out in search of killing woolly mammoths for our evening meals.

But sometimes I truly wonder about that...