THIS is the Christmas season - a time where peace to mankind and joy to the world should rightly reverberate around us.

As a Christian, I think that Christmas is truly one of the most joyous and blessed seasons in the year. Let me exhort all fellow Christians to open our hearts and let the One who was born in a stable in humility, died on a cross in love, and rose from the dead in power, enter in!

As a Malaysian, I must confess that there were times when I fear for the degradation of religious tolerance in our multi-religious and multi-racial nation.

Two issues concerning Christians alone in recent days bear testimony to the fragile state of our so-called religious harmony which we have so proudly proclaimed to others but failed to commit ourselves to.