Commentary   Christmas is usually a time to celebrate with friends and family, indulge in food and drink, and spend more than we can afford buying gifts. But the new COVID restrictions mean that we will, yet again, be denied the usual festivities and celebrations with our loved ones. Perhaps this is a year to stand back and reflect on the nation’s spiritual state. Like many Canadians of a certain age, I have witnessed the remarkable decline of the Christian Church as a significant social force throughout the industrialized, democratic nations. Yet Christmas and the Christian ethos are woven into the fabric of western civilization. As Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher of science, wrote, “our Western civilization owes its rationalism, its faith in the rational unity of man and in the open society, its faith in its scientific outlook, to the ancient Socratic and Christian belief in the brotherhood of …