“Christmas is the one day in the year we would most like to be at home,” said President Jeffrey R. Holland in the 2025 First Presidency’s Christmas Devotional.
Yet he noted with compassion the many who won’t be home this Christmas — the nearly 85,000 missionaries serving far and wide, usually not close to home; the students who won’t be able to afford the trip back; the hundreds of thousands of service personnel going to war around the globe.
In a prerecorded broadcast on Sunday, Dec. 7, the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — mindful of those who may feel abandoned this month — extended a holiday charge to his listeners: “This Christmas, may I invite each of you to be, however briefly, a family for someone who is otherwise alone.”
An invitation to bless those alone at Christmas
One popular Christmas song is “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” said President Holland, “and if we are not able to be there, we get a little lump in our throat, even if we are grown and gone from the toys and tinsel of our childhood.”
Even two millennia ago, Jesus, Mary and Joseph knew what it was like to be alone and away from home on this special night.
“Loneliness is a terribly painful feeling. I know that many have been lonelier than I, but these past three Christmases have been very painful for me without the companionship of that perfect mother,” he said of his late wife, Sister Patricia Holland, who died in July 2023.
However, he also observed “something redemptive [is] happening to me in this period. It has been a time for more reflection, for more humility and for showing more appreciation,” he said.
“Perhaps this Christmas, we can bless the life of someone who is still temporarily alone in a manner that makes them feel — even for a moment or for a meal or for an afternoon — that they have been able to make it home for Christmas.”
A humble setting for the Savior’s life
President Holland described the humble setting of the first Nativity, quoting the hymn “Once in Royal David’s City”: “His shelter was a stable, and His cradle was a stall; with the poor, and mean and lowly, lived on earth our Savior holy.”
He added: “Just a few short years later, that baby would be without company again, declaring that He had ‘trodden the winepress alone,’ and none were with Him (Isaiah 63:3), fearing in the depths of His suffering that He had been abandoned entirely, even by His Father in Heaven.”
Understanding of this suffering came later, said President Holland, “turning Christmas night into one of joy and promises, a night of angels and stars and salvation, a night for being with loved ones, if we are able.”
‘The greatest gift of all at Christmas’
Applauding missionaries for their sometimes lonely but rewarding service, President Holland closed his Sunday remarks by reading a Christmas letter of reflection and tenderness from one former missionary — the late Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.
“Dear Dad, this is the first time in my life that I’ve not been home for Christmas,” the letter reads. “I miss you, [Dad. But with this new] distance between us, I begin to see in your life the [true] spirit of Christmas. ... God bless you, Dad, and keep you ever wonderful to me.”
President Holland left listeners with season’s blessings and a witness of the blessing who is remembered this season: “Merry Christmas from our Father in Heaven, who never flags nor fails, and from His Only Begotten Son, His baby — this baby and our Brother — who grew up to ‘[bear] our griefs, [carry] our sorrows; [and] be bruised for our iniquities’ (Isaiah 53:4-5).
“We thank our Father in Heaven for the promised Messiah — the greatest gift of all at Christmas.”
