Why did God descend, take on flesh, be born in a manger to a simple peasant girl?

Why?

Shakespeare, in Hamlet, nails it in his self-diagnosis, which - in the end - is the diagnosis of all of us.

This is us.

This is me:

I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.

Thank you, William Shakespeare, for being sparsely brilliant with words.

For reminding me afresh that I cannot save myself, but need a Force, a Goodness larger and fiercer than my own, to invade this dark world, my own dark soul ...

Before the celebration next week, we must reckon with the reason for it all.

It is not "those politicians," "those crooked CEOs," "those people who are other than me," who are the problem.

It is me.

It is you.

It is us.