What’s your favourite Christmas tradition? Is it exchanging gifts, baking special desserts, decorating the tree, or perhaps wearing ugly Christmas sweaters?

For many of us, our most cherished Christmas tradition probably involves lights, whether they’re on your own Christmas tree, or decorating houses in your neighbourhood.

Some people go all out, putting tens of thousands of lights on their home. There’s even a long-running TV reality show called “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” in which families compete against each other to create elaborate Christmas light displays.

This season is inextricably linked to lights, but might we have missed the most important light of all?

We’re putting up Christmas lights in houses and on streets that are already well lit. The colourful lights are beautiful and bring us joy, but don’t really provide much extra illumination. We seem to have all the light we need.

But maybe we don’t realize how much darkness we’re really in. With our busy, self-sufficient lives, we may not recognize that we’re lacking a different sort of light, one that resides inside of us.