You may not remember or know much about Roy L. Smith, but one of his most famous quotes declares a holiday season dichotomy: "He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree."

The same seemingly contradictory sentiment was summed up this way by poet Margaret Sangster (later widely misattributed to John Greenleaf Whittier):

"For somehow, not only for Christmas, but all the long year through,

The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you."

When Washington Irving called Christmas "the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart," he was speaking of states of heart and mind that radiate outward, toward others.

At its holy and hallowed core, Christmas is about the spirit of giving--which innatel

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